Jonathan Revusky wrote:
A third point that I must make in this context is that, though, in the
above, I am criticizing the "electoral democracy" aspects of this, I
actually don't subscribe to the idea that an open source project is a
one man-one vote democracy of any sort anyway. For example, in the
FreeMarker project, the opinion of somebody who has made some tiny
contribution to the code (and is thus a "committer") cannot be
considered equal to mine, when simply most of the current core code base
was written by me. And thus, the idea that this person's vote is equal
to mine strikes me as absurd. It would be equally absurd if I joined
another project, and after making a nominal contribution, considered
that my vote was equal to that of someone who had written, say, 80% of
the code.
You might be interested in the bylaws I wrote for Java Web Parts:
http://sourceforge.net/docman/?group_id=140728
Most importantly in the context of this discussion is the fact that
ANYONE who contributes AT ALL can vote and HAVE THEIR VOTE COUNT.
Non-contributors can vote too, but are non-binding (I am considering
changing this).
I have a weighting system for how peoples' votes count... "contributors"
count as 1, "developers" (aka committers) count as 1.5 and
"administrators" (aka the PMC) count as 2. The only requirement is that
a person be subscribed to the mailing list, since all voting takes place
there. There is a formula used to calculate the final result of a vote,
and simple majority carries the vote.
By the way, the definition of "contributor" is "anyone that contributes
to JWP". I probably should refine that definition a bit :) But, the
point is that I wanted it to be a very low barrier of entry, so even if
you just point out a batch of spelling errors in the documentation, you
would be considered a contributor and get a counted vote.
I bet some of the people on the contributors list don't even know they
have a vote! :) In truth though, we have yet to have an actual vote on
anything, so I suppose it's all untested.
The voting system is perhaps a bit convoluted, but I tried to write it
in such a way that no one person, INCLUDING ME, could grab control of
the project. There is also veto power on all votes, and more
importantly, an override provision... for instance, while I as an
Administrator can veto any vote, either of the other two developers can
call for an override vote. I of course cannot vote in the override
vote, and if my veto is overridden, that's the final word, I cannot
override the veto.
I have no doubt there are flaws in my system, but my goal was to give
everyone a voice, and to ensure that the will of the majority would be
done no matter what.
Frank
--
Frank W. Zammetti
Founder and Chief Software Architect
Omnytex Technologies
http://www.omnytex.com
AIM: fzammetti
Yahoo: fzammetti
MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Java Web Parts -
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net
Supplying the wheel, so you don't have to reinvent it!
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