At 8:22 PM -0700 on 5/7/99, Alain Farmer wrote:
>Alain : In my book, Direct-Democracy is NOT equivalent to
>Majority-Rule. The latter can easily become a tyranny for the governed
>minorities whose numbers are insufficient to protect their interests.
Anthony: In my book, full democracy (i.e., democracy without protection
of rights of both the majority and the minority) is not a sane
form of government.
Anthony: Of course, there is a MAJOR check on the power of the majority
of OODL. Any one person, even when faced with opposition of
ten thousand, can decide "I want know more of this" and split
off. We have here only government by the unanimous consent of
the governed -- the way proper government should be.
Anthony: This is one of the important things about free software. If you
don't like the policies of the powers that be, you can ignore
the powers that be. You can tell them to go [bad word] themselves
to [bad place].
Anthony: That's the one thing that will, above all others, see to it that
the leaders of OpenCard follow the will of the members: If they
do not, the members will split off. A leader with no followers is
merely a leader by title, and in practice no leader at all.
Anthony: For example, if I became UI leader, and decided to make OpenCard
use a CLI, (which I'd NEVER do) everyone would tell me to go
[bad word] myself to [bad place] and ignore it. I'd have plenty of
power by title, but none in practice.
Anthony: It is thus that our leaders have no real, enforceable power. They
are people to make minor decisions and the head discussions. They
are people we have entrusted to make basic decisions. And if we
don't like their decisions, we simply don't follow them. They can't
make us.
Anthony: Of course I hope that their decisions will be followed. A good
leader should not need force and coercion; he should prevail by
quality of ideas and logic alone.
Anthony: For example, if the programming leader refuses to check in a file
because it crashes the compiler, no one will object: The decision
is completely logical; if you can't even compile it, you certainly
can't use it. On the other hand, if he refuses to check in a file
because he does not like live scrolling (which it implements), and
the collaboration does, his decision will simply be ignored;
someone else will download the source tree and compile a version
with that file. And since everyone is behind the change, everyone
will be behind the person who now compiled it with live scrolling.
The programming leader is thus powerless. And a new leader has thus
been elected.
Anthony: This brings into question why we even have leaders. Well, because
hopefully they will represent the members. And when they do, having
an official build to report bugs against, having someone who should
know the intricate details of something, is a plus.
Anthony: I think by now I have gone on long enough. This is five hundred words.
