Community V. "Community

[Mario Vukelic]

On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 08:57 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
> Ha! By your own words, it is necessary for a elite group to exclude
> mere users from actual coding.

No. It is necessary for an elite group that is responsible for critical
code to make any users prove that their code is worth it and that they
fit the existing group.

And thank $DEITY I don't have to fear that Joe User threw his "Operating
Systems 101" code into the kernel I use.

Did you ever think it is a democracy? Well it's not, the kernel has
always been a meritocracy.

Note: this is different for userland projects, and you may have noticed
that nobody is sending the black ninjas if you take it upon yourself to
write a GUI tool for this or that.

> 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. 

The main thing I read in that article is that Brainstorm was overrun by
its own success and currently sucks. Which is true, but hardly a damning
judgement. It was tried, sucks, and will be improved. Stop being sulky.

In any case, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Con Kolivas and the
kernel. Con did not try to do drive-by coding in the kernel and did not
complain about not being part of the community after trying to read
Brainstorm for 4 weeks. 

> That is certainly what I found in the case of OpenSolaris.

Can't comment, but not surprising. Solaris has always been a
professionals' OS.

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

Depends on how you define community. Users are very much a part of the
support, documentation and translation communities, for example. Users
should be a part of the specification community, but you got to accept
that this is not simple to do. Either you make the bar low, then you get
Brainstorm, or you make it higher to sieve out anyone who does not want
to put in some effort, then people whine.

I mean, Amber is right that new users sometimes see issues better, and
should be given the chance to comment easily. Brainstorm *does* this,
but the result is thousands of ideas and overwhelmed devs.

Much of what she complains about (can's see status of ideas, etc) would
be solved with a wishlist bug in Launchpad, but that would require to
familiarize oneself at least a little bit with LP.

> 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?

Another interesting part is that other OSes don't have anything like it
in the slightest, but Ubuntu is being bashed for not being perfect at
it. 

Amber concludes with, 'Here's an example:
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/spotlight/uds
Look at "What the Ubuntu Developer Summit Is": Is open to the Public,
then look in "Who Should Attend": It's not for end users.... So it's
open to the pubic [sic] of developers, or did I get it wrong?'

Well, guess what, all it says is that it is open to the public, but the
devs won't bend over backwards to entertain you. If you have nothing to
contribute, you might want to stay home, it's not a Linux fair.  Tough
cookie.

She conveniently leaves out to complete text, so that she can complain
better:

"What the Ubuntu Developer Summit Is
At the beginning of a new development cycle, Ubuntu developers from
around the world gather to help shape and scope the next release of
Ubuntu. The summit is open to the public, but is not a traditional
conference, exhibition or other audience-oriented event. Rather, it is
an opportunity for Ubuntu developers - who usually collaborate online -
to work together in person on specific tasks.

Our development cycle is unique we think, even in the open source and
free software world. Anyone can come and propose a feature and the
discussion and propositions are all considered, approved and/or rejected
entirely in the public domain. This openness and transparency, we
believe, is what makes Ubuntu such a strong, community driven product."


Twisting the UDS announcement in this way is already bad enough, but
reading some of the comments I want to puke. Most of it seems like
whiners who can't take that they don't get everything served on a silver
plate, but have to, you know, earn it. No wonder the economy goes down
the drain due to a credit crisis, it's always "but I want it now, now,
now!".