On 03/01/11 02:00, Larry Gusaas wrote: > And the condescending comment that led to my response sure wasn't very > positive. I have no patience with people who say you have to "contribute > to the code" in order to have a say in the project. Or that you should > "contribute code yourself" if you want a product improved, modified, > fixed etc. I have seen this attitude far too often in open source projects
I feel compelled to come to the defence of Italo and Berhard. I haven't read anything from Italo that could be construed as condescension. Italo was simply highlighting the absurdity of *dictating* from the sidelines. (Note: there is a difference between *contribution* and *dictation*; your attitude, so far as I can see, is symptomatic of the latter) I have little doubt that were you to put forward constructive ideas, they would be taken on-board. However, in reality, even a community-driven project such as this will place more weight behind the opinions of its chief architects (developers, designers and other contributes) than it will those of unknown elements such as you and I. All of which means that whilst the final decision lays with the various steering committees, a well reasoned argument backed up by facts and figures could well sway the steering committees decisions. Unfortunately your arguments regarding OOXML aren't motivated by reason, but rather by politics and so I suspect they're unlikely to sway anyone belonging to one of the steering committees. As I recall, someone earlier defined the term *community* in the context of *The Document Foundation* to include all *contributors* and explicitly excluded those who 'contribute' to mailing list discussions from this broad group. This is absolutely correct in my humble opinion. But that shouldn't preclude contributions (in the form of different perspectives and ideas) from mailing list discussions. It's just that if we, as an unknown quantity, have to back up such ideas with reasoned debate. Such a mixture of meritocracy and consensus democracy is the only viable means of managing this kind of project. Anything else would risk allowing unqualified individuals to drive the project (into the ground) and also risk excluding intelligent ideas from the wider community (of end-users) simply because they lack proven qualifications. Kind Regards, Lee Hyde. -- "The division of mankind threatens it with destruction. Only universal cooperation under conditions of intellectual freedom and the lofty moral ideals of socialism and labor, accompanied by the elimination of dogmatism and pressure of the concealed interests of ruling classes, will preserve civilization." -- Andrei Sakharov, The New York Times (July 22nd, 1968) -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***