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Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Ned Slider<ned@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> R P Herrold wrote:
>>> On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Marcus Moeller wrote:
>>>
>> <snip everything>
>>
>> The bit that causes all the confusion here is the "C" in the name
>> CentOS. It would all be so much clearer if the project would just rename
>> to EntOS because that's what it is.
>>
>> I guess the "Community" bit refers to the community of users, nothing more.
>
> The word Community has multiple definitions and is usually what the
> people living in it want. A community can be a commune or a
> dictatorship of the meritocrit. Its rules do not have to be democratic
> or even open to outsiders (or insiders who are not 'blessed') And a
> community does not mean that anyone who 'moves in' are automatically
> part of the community.
+1
I think you've totally hit the nail square on the proverbial head with
this post Smooge. ;)
A community is nothing more than a group of individuals congregating
together for whatever particular purpose they choose to be in such a
group, and does not specify the manner in which the group is organized,
governed, managed, etc.
As you state, labelling a group as a "community" certainly does not
imply or require that group to be an elected democracy, nor does it
imply that "everyone's opinion counts equally" within the group.
Popular opinion/vote makes for nice statistics, but often for poor
decision making, especially if those forming and spreading the opinions
and/or doing the voting aren't held to the high standards that are
needed for good decisions to occur.
The majority of successful open source/free software projects out there
are meritocracies - not wide open democracies. One need only look at
the Linux kernel, all of GNU, and the various other well known projects
in the OSS landscape to see that it is meritocracy that reigns supreme
in the world of OSS.
If the naysayers of such meritocracies actually have things of value to
add to a given OSS project, and spend their time working on such
contributions instead of whining about exclusion on public forums, etc.
they'd likely find themselves climbing the meritocracy food chains of
said projects in short order if they truly have things of value to offer.
> And each person coming to an online community will bring whatever of
> the above views of how a community works .. which is why a lot of
> people grump, flame, and disagree violently about why XYZ community
> initiative is not a community.
Yep, I think it is because people often want to travel straight from A
to Z without having to go through B, C, D, etc. Another subset of
people, "the talkers" want to dictate to the "doers" how things should
be done, often without wanting to (or perhaps without having the skills
to) actually do any solid contributions themselves. They can safely
just be ignored. ;o)
- --
Mike A. Harris
http://mharris.ca | https://twitter.com/mikeaharris
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