[ubuntu-uk] Google Chrome

[Robert McWilliam]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 12:15:53AM +0100, Philip Wyett wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-09-01 at 22:46 +0100, Robert McWilliam wrote:
> > That's kind of missing the whole point of open source. <snip>
>
> Well... I'll skip the first sentence as such a thing should be never
> said on a list such as this because it will offend!

Sorry if that offended, but I don't see why it would. I think there
must be some miscommunication here. I was disagreeing with the idea
that we would be better off if everybody could be made to concentrate
on some core apps because it runs contrary to what I think to be the
point and main advantage to open source: everybody is free to build
whatever variation they like, or pick from the multitude built by
others. 

> Nobody is dictating or wanting to be a dictator and using such
> inflammatory language does nothing for debate.

"Benevolent dictator" is a common term in open source for the leader
of a project where that leader gets to make all the decisions and
everybody else has to go along with it or fork (they do usually listen
to input from other people before dictating or there would be far more
forks). Mark Shuttleworth labels himself the "self appointed benevolent
dictator for life" for Ubuntu. I was expanding that to cover the whole
open source ecosystem and dropped the benevolent as I think it would
do a lot more harm than good. 
 
> Choice is a good thing but can be defined as an issue in certain
> circumstances. A bad can hurt the overall goal or offering numerous
> choices can hurt us by confusion. It's a balancing act that really does
> have to be thought about sometimes in my opinion.

So long as we're in agreement that it is something to think about when
presenting to users and you're not going to try and take my compiler
away if I decide to write yet-another-web-browser then I'm happy :)

     Robert 

________________________________________________________
Robert McWilliam     rmcw at allmail.net    www.ormiret.com

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.