On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 03:09:32PM -0500, "Michael J. Hammel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> XFree86, Apache, and others all formed boards and/or non-profits to help
> deal with the situation. I believe its time the GIMP community
> seriously considered this as well.
We should also consider that xfree86 currently falls aparts exactly
because of the board (and wrecks for quite some time already). And many
other projects live fine without boards, too. GCC (one of the largest free
software projects) did fine, too, for a very long time. Apache probably
has less problems because they try very hard not do decide things over the
heads of other people.
Boards are a concept alien to free software projects, since boards
work like "we decide, you do the work", which might work in corporate
structures, but doesn't work at all in free software environments.
Non-profit organizations are, on the other hand, often seperated from the
project itself (esp. for the Gimp, as the developers feel afaics strongly
against handing over the rights to the code to such an organization, which
means it would have no rights at all to the gimp).
Recently I hear a lot about "target audience" and "have to work with the
industry" and similar ideas.
In my opinion, this has exactly zero relevance. The question to ask is:
how would a board/non-profit-org help the _developers_. One can create
boards as much as one likes, this won't change nor create a single line of
code or code-change.
And if it doesn't help the people who write the code (e.g. by getting
specifications or the like), then I don't see why such a thing should be
founded in the first place.
So what are the benefits of a board for the developers? How would that
help them? How would such a board counter the frustration on the side of
developers that a board exists that has power but no obilgations? Where
does it get it's rights from? Who has to submit to it's decisions? How
is it elected (if at all)?
--
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---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann +--
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-=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ XX11-RIPE --+
The choice of a GNU generation |
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