On 1 September 2011 17:27, Ian Lynch <ianrly...@gmail.com> wrote: > My view is how do we make > FOSS more effective? Partly as a Committer here within the rules associated > with that, partly through my business with the rules and constraints that > has and partly with LibreO, why worry? If you can do what you want within > the rules just do it. If you can't, do those things somewhere else where its > ok.
Exactly! The whole point of the ASF way of doing things is that the foundation stays very tightly focussed on what it does well. It cultivates communities of people who congregate around needs that can be satisfied by software. That means the foundation provides infrastructure to support the communities that build the software. The foundation tries to stay out of everything else, others do those things better. For example, the Conference Committee doesn't organise conferences, it supports people willing to create the local teams who put on great conferences. The Community Development PMC doesn't fund internships, it manages the relationship between providers of internships and the ASF and so on. The foundations projects do, however, recognise people who seek to build bridges. Those people are critical to healthy communities and should be recognised as such. I can think of a few foundation members who do not write code, they have become foundation members because they build bridges. Ross
