On 6/20/07, Karsten Wade <kwade@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > When you have created a package repo that can support all those > personality types, then you have a model for Communism is an utopia. People forget that some of the best and greatest communist utopias -- city-sized/wide -- were founded in the US. Utopias work when everyone agrees and holds each other accountable. You don't need processes or rules or denials, because everyone just works together. For an engineer like myself, communism is the ultimate ideal and efficiency -- which is why, not surprisingly -- the Soviet Communist Party was dominated by engineers. And it utterly _fails_ when you have an organization large enough were personal accountability is not feasible, people _differ_ on goals. And that eventually results in another structure, be it of merit (meritocratic-republic) or majority (democratic-republic) or otherwise. And that's where others yet just won't deal with any "process" they consider is "wrong." How you address that, there's _no_ "silver bullet." In the US, we engineers studied microeconomics and its microcosm of technical feasibility, market aspects and various limits -- despite it's gross inefficiencies and sheer "unfairness" in comparison -- because we believe capitalism, and the efforts people put towards its incentives, is one way we know that works for us. Not that it's perfect. Not that it doesn't stomp on people. And Americans engineers will be the first to tell you that "freedom" isn't about "fair." I've had this argument with people in the CentOS project, various, major maintainers like DAG and others, who constantly complain about the "processes" and "inconsideration" that the Fedora Project imposes to be a contributor. But guess what? Debian has its "rules." Many other projects have their "rules" as well. And yes, it's driven somewhat by an agenda of -- ultimately -- Red Hat, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a "bad idea." Especially when it comes to not merely just package-level testing, but more importantly, integration testing and regression avoidance. Those right there are very, very important characteristics of a properly tuned engineering lifecycle. While it would be great if we could all work directly together like a single, engineering team -- and individual software projects and packages included by and for Fedora can do that -- it still doesn't solve the larger issues of integration testing and regression avoidance. So what is the "utopia"? I don't know, but I can tell you one thing for certain. When people _differ_ on what that is, it's a great sign that it's _not_ possible at all. So that's where the "rules" -- which we engineers call things such as "requirements" and "specifications" and "reviews" -- that matter. And yes, market considerations -- oh those inconsiderate, "evil enterprise" thoughts that Red Hat sometimes "pushes" on the "community" comes out as Red Hat employees work on Fedora, just like they do the kernel, GCC, GLibC, etc... -- are there, especially when people don't feel they don't represent "the will of the [Linux] people." But Fedora, like any other "community" project survives on its contributors. And those contributors have built a set of processes and requirements and foci base on their time, energy and efforts. If people who want to contribute, but claim they do not, because they claim "Fedora," or worse yet, "Red Hat doesn't care" -- then they are free to fork and do what they wish. And we have continually seen what happens in the majority of cases (although not all), those efforts die off. And the few that remain do remain because those contributors can work within a set of rules and realizations that there's a lot of effort required. "Utopia"? That term ranks up there with my other favorite, non-tangible term that people like to use as if it's a finite, discrete product or service -- "Renewable." On Thu, 2007-06-28 at 07:32 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote: > I'm perfectly fine with trailblazer and pioneer repos, full of > alternative builds or new things, that are intrinsicly more difficult > to deal with. I'm not so fine with a set of tools aimed at settlers > that encourages them to play in the more dangerous spaces without a > liability waiver analogy. > -jef"there is a reason that only 1 in 4 families who claimed land > during the landrush of the mid-western united states were able to > survive more than one winter."spaleta Those who contribute and make Fedora are the ones who set the "requirements" and "reviews" to be in Fedora. They don't set those details lightly, and they don't set them to "control" the process without the utmost consideration for all. Everyone is "free" to contribute, as long as they respect those processes. Those who don't are free to consider other, alternative mechanisms and approaches outside of those processes. Some do, and they do a great job. I'll always appreciate those who have their own ways of making things work. But those who complain about the "control" on Fedora or -- more directly, Red Hat -- often use the same "it's not fair" I hear of so many processes and systems. It's _never_ been about "fair," it's only been about consideration for those who came before them, what they thought worked, and how they worked together -- "freely" not "fairly." Most people agree what "free" is. Few people agree what "fair" is. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx http://thebs413.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------------- Fission Power: An Inconvenient Solution -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
