Community V. "Community

Christopher Chan christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk
Fri Mar 20 00:57:46 GMT 2009


Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 15:31 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
>   
>> Heh, guess why I put in my remark about paying for coding to be done in 
>> my previous post?
>>     
>
> I did not see such a remark, sorry:
>   
Oh yeah, you're right...it was in the initial draft for my reply to the 
OP but I cut it out...
> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 08:33 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote: 
> ----------------------
>   
>> More like he was ignored by the 'Community' while a member of the 
>> 'Community' came up with something similar.
>> After all, how could they let a user transform into a 'to be taken 
>> seriously developer' who had zero developer background.
>>
>> But hey, you could say he finally got the 'Community' to 'listen'.
>>
>> Who wants to try next?
>>     
> ----------------------
>
>
>   
>> However, how are you going to argue that one in the case of Con who is a 
>> user that contributed working code? He did it on his own 'pocket' and I 
>> don't remember there being any complaints about his scheduler adversely 
>> affecting 'server performance'. Otherwise, by your reasoning, CFS would 
>> never had happened.
>>     
>
> To my knowledge, CFS *was* the scheduler that was chosen over his, and
> it was precisely for server performance.
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/8059
>
>   
That summary is rather slanted.

--Quote--

I find this useful, but to be fair with Mike and Con, they both have
proposed similar tuning knobs in the past and you said you did not want
to add that complexity for admins. People can sometimes be demotivated
by seeing their proposals finally used by people who first rejected them. 
And since both Mike and Con both have done a wonderful job in that area,
we need their experience and continued active participation more than ever.

--End Quote--

No effort at all was made to direct Con in the direction they wanted. It 
was a plain and simple, you're not a developer, go home. CFS would most 
probably never have happened had not Con come up with his scheduler and 
proven that you can improve desktop performance.
>> Amber got it right, there is Community and then there is 'Community'.
>>     
>
> I believe you are improperly abridging a more complicated story.
>
> For one, the kernel is complicated and it is a highly critical piece of
> software. Becoming a kernel contributor needs to be earned and the bar
> is extremely high. I'm not saying Con did not make the bar (I would not
> be qualified to judge in the first place), but it's wrong to blame the
> kernel devs for not welcoming each and every one right away.
>
> I'm not saying that everything went exactly correct with Con (again, I'm
> not qualified to judge), but the kernel is not only technically complex,
> but also socially. To get stuff accepted as a regular, it needs to be
> high quality, you need to prove that you know what you are doing, and
> I'm sure you need to fit the social fabric in some way. That's just to
> be expected.
>
> I dispute your harsh words about the exclusion of mere users by an elite
> group. If you read the link above you will see that it's not so simple.
>
>
>   

Ha! By your own words, it is necessary for a elite group to exclude mere 
users from actual coding.

The thing that I am driving at is the elite group has more often than 
not demonstrated aloofness to users except their employers which is what 
Amber is driving at. That is certainly what I found in the case of 
OpenSolaris.

Users are not part of the 'Community'. Period.

The interesting part here is that Ubuntu tries to change that by 
building a bridge between them. What I would like to see is the final 
outcome of the bridge. Will it be rickety, ugly and liable to collapse 
at the slightest step or will it be a solid and ornate one?



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