Community V. "Community

[Derek Broughton]

Mario Vukelic wrote:

> 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.

Indeed.  I find most OSS development groups exclusionary to some degree, but
that's not necessarily a bad thing and the process of joining is, in
general, fairly simple.  You start by posting bugs, you migrate to posting
patches - or documentation which is _always_ welcome - and eventually
you're providing enough work that the current developers find it easier to
give you commit access to the source repository.  

Somewhere along the way, you're almost certain to rub _somebody_ the wrong
way (OK, maybe not the rest of you...).  How you handle it, and how
important that other developer is to the project, will have an important
influence on whether you will be accepted by the "community".

I've been complaining a fair bit in the past six months about developers
ignoring the user community, but I really feel that's a different problem -
it's not that they're shutting us out, it's that they don't even seem aware
that they're missing a very valuable source of input to their
decision-making process.
-- 
derek