On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 03:50, Christian Einfeldt wrote: > > The question, though, is do those projects have enough hackers? Or, > actually, the question is, do we have enough non-Sun hackers, and > if not, why not, and what can we do about it.
My solution is to develop a revenue stream so we can pay hackers to do development work and educate kids as to how to become a hacker. > > Have you considered the fact that OOo's organizational structure > > makes it so hard for them to give back? > > I can see your point here, and I have always actually agreed with > you on this point. My question has always been, what exactly is > broken, and how can it be fixed. The main issue is that Sun's corporate culture is based on control. If you want anything done it has to go through Sun Legal. So this filters down to the project. Its why the website, for example, is more difficult to contribute to than say Wikipedia. Getting code into the system is a notch higher. > Generally, it is my impression > that we need to deal with Sun and other corporations more than > other projects, for example, Apache. Corporations are often slow > moving beasts, and the problem with corporate governance is a topic > of scholarly research unto itself. I actually am not at all a > scholar of corporate governance, and so I find myself at sea in > these discussions. I agree that it would be desireable to have > more flexibility, but exactly how we achieve that in the case of > OOo is tricky. I'd say nigh on impossible. Sun would have to change the ethos of a lifetime and those with the power to change that ethos probably don't really understand FLOSS methods at all. They would be highly counter-intuitive. So to me we are stuck with Sun and the current status until someone comes a long with the resources to either force them to change or to take over. I have nothing against Sun. They did a great job getting OOo started even if some of their execs don't get it. This is more just an objective assessment of the way things are. > > > If you think that I am advocating "accepting that those in > > > authority know best", I can understand your point. Merely > > > accepting authority does not result in a robust open source > > > project. > > > > But that is what you are perceived to advocate. > > I can see that Bruce and Enrique and you and probably several others > have that perception, so I am glad that we are having this > discussion, because that is not my intention or my own perception > of myself. In fact, I recall when I first came to this list, Sam > Hiser once bawled me out for being too left wing! So now it's > kinda funny that I am being viewed the opposite way. Heh. Christian, you are a diplomat. What you do is very valuable. You try and keep people working together and you judge that to be more important than your personal political views. I have great symapthy with this because we need to keep going warts and all unless we can come up with something that really will improve things. The time to change things is when we are in a position to change things and its clear that the risk is minimal and the benefits high. In my judgement (which could of course be entirely wrong ;-) ) This is not such a time. > Generally speaking the forces of central control are winning in the > US, and here I am speaking of neither a left-right argument, nor a > Democrat-Republican argument, but I'm repeating Larry Lessig's > concerns about the Microsoft-Disney-Comcast drive for nothing less > than perfect control of all three layers of the Internet. Fortunately these are global issues and a number of countries don't seem to agree with the US perspective. > But on an international scale, FLOSS is winning, and even in the US, > the foundation is being laid for a digital tipping point, and I > very much want us to win that contest. And the end justifies the means. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by reducing the effectiveness of OOo. OOo is the killer app for getting FLOSS to win. Sun really have let the genie out of the bottle and not them nor M$ can put it back. They might create the odd gale and disrupt the Genie - I'd expect them too - when it does things they don't like but in the end our solidarity will make this thing work and the more we stick together the quicker it will happen. > IMHO, it is not in our best > interest to believe that we can win that contest without corporate > participation and support. IMHO, I would like to see us develop > ways to work intelligently and creatively with our corporate > partners, and if that entails a small bit of humility and putting > up with corporate bluster, bravado and even a bit of corporate > control, then so be it. We need to get better at dancing with the > devil, without having the devil step on our toes so hard as to > cause permanent damage. +1 > Vast swaths of the world's population place a significant level of > trust in large institutions such as business, government, and > social institutions. Those institutions are often very rigid, very > hierarchical, very wealthy, and very centralized. We have to > develop the skills in dealing with those large institutions without > losing our core focus on the benefit to our core constituency: > overshot customers and non-consumers who can't afford or won't pay > for the "premium" features offered by the market leader. +1 > To the extent that I appear willing to accept the opinions of the > leads in this project, I believe that appearance is based on my > sense from personal interaction with them that they have those > skills. If I side with our leads, it is because, on the whole, I > believe that they have the right mix of skills to balance the > community's demands for openness with the corporate desire for > predictability and control. But I don't think that attitude means > that I am not interested in using my own independent judgment to > assess whether our leads are doing a good job or not. I have never > thought of myself as a kiss-ass or a brown-noser or a suck-up or a > yes-man, and I don't think my comments on this list change my view > of myself in that regard. The bottom line is that if the leads are that damaging, campaign to replace them. Personally, I don't think this would help the project. I think it would actaully be highly detrimental and its highly doubtful that we could replace the leads with better ones anyway. The leads are largely contrained by the corporate structure in which they work and we are not in a position to challenge or change that. Let's fight battles we can win not waste energy on things we can't do much about at the moment. > But I do pick my battles carefully, because I have always fought for > the underdog, and I am sick and tired of losing. But its a hell of a lot more satisfying when you do win :-) > In my law > practice I represent those who get screwed over by large > institutions, and I think that FLOSS inherently favors the fringes > of the network (end users) over the center hub (corporate > decision-makers), so I see my work in FLOSS as directed toward > supporting the fringes over the hub. I don't think that my general > attitude of support for our leads changes that general posture. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd
