On 1/6/02 8:15 AM, "Geir Magnusson Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 1/6/02 3:52 AM, "Peter Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 16:10, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: >>> I was leafing through my copy of "A Pattern Language" by Alexander, >>> Ishikawa and Silverstein, which is really about architecture of human >>> habitat (buildings and environs), and ran across some interesting >>> assertions about society and groups. >> >> good book. >> >>> The summary for me is that I think that the Apache sub communities are >>> valuable, and should be kept. >> >> ok. >> >> I guess thats one reading of it but if anything the snippets you provided >> seem to me to encourage merging of XML and jakarta if anything ;) >> >> Effectively XML/Jakarta would become a single city with a mosaic of >> subcultures. Already we have different sub-cultures which are effectively >> defined by the committers - when a committer is a member of multiple projects >> they tend to imbue the projects with their own "culture". > > Apache is a single city with a mosaic of subcultures, some of which might be > really different in their interests and behaviors, and some are very much > alike. Because we are all under one umbrella, and we have open, porous > borders, we are free to visit and even belong to other subcultures as well. Or you can say, better, that Apache is a country, with the Apache projects (Jakarta, XML, PHP) as the cities, each with a mosaic of subcultures (the subprojects : Velocity, Struts, Staglibs, Tomcat, Turbine...) However, this to me seems somewhat scale-invariant, because you have within each subculture identifiable subcultures as well - I always think that there are different subgroups in tomcat, 4.x and 3.x (note *not* 4.x vs 3.x), turbine has subprojects (I am a member of small one, but not participatory in the 'main' Turbine project... Also - in human culture, where you then go down to specific neighborhood and then families. One might argue that cities merging is a natural thing, as that's how how villages become towns become cities. But do cities really ever merge? (W/o the intervention of people like Robert Moses - the social downside to his transportation engineering projects in the NY metro area was *huge* - totally destroyed neighborhoods...) I guess what I am arguing is that culture and community is an organic thing and we have to be careful what kind of 'engineering' we apply to it. Hm. > >> >> However I guess you were trying to support the exact opposit view so I will >> shut up now ;) >> > > Don't shut up, but yes indeed I was :) -- Geir Magnusson Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] System and Software Consulting "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
