[ubuntu-in] Ubuntu: meritocracy not democracy (article)

[Ramnarayan.K]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 7:12 PM, Narendra Diwate
<narendra.diwate at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only thing that happens in a democracy are squabbling, delays,
> indecision, wrong decisions and going with the tide so to speak. Thats not
> good for any project.
>

This is where i differ, the above is acceptable only to a certain
extent and in a very limited context - "projects".

Assume for a moment if the same theory were applied to "open source"
and the argument would die a quick and untimely and rather pitiful
death

The adjectives then take on a different note - democracy becomes a
willingness to allow multiple perspectives - squabbling becomes
debate, delays become a need to consider options, indecision becomes
being inclusive, wrong decisions still remain wrong decisions but
wrong for some and not so wrong for others, going with the tide
becomes majority decision (not always good for a democracy) and all
this diversity is very good for a broad population of people and
theories.

"No democracy" means only gentoo or debian and no deriviatives - and
this applies for any project. Just think if we still had to work with
Linux versions that were not (excuse me for saying this) dumbed down
for us ordinary users. Chances are Ubuntu would not have been the hot
property that it is now.

In the context of Ubuntu its a matter of time before there is a major
split and there will be enough folks to start work on improving Ubuntu
- there already are - like Mint, Ultimate, etc and however
meritocratic Ubuntu wants to be they cannot stop that because Linux /
Open Source is still democratic in its essence

ram