Lessons Learned

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 12:04 -0400, Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 
> > Instead, Fedora has a leadership system, which is widely being ignored 
> > by the public, unless it interferes with individual contributor 
> > interests.
> 
> Isn't that basically how governments work?
Temporarily yes. 

History tells, in longer terms such governments inevitably will die. In
democratic systems, they sooner or later will be replaced, in absolutist
systems these governments will sooner or later be chased or die
lonesome.

> The *real* question: when the Fedora leadership (government)
You are missing an essential detail: Governments must have control over
a "people". OpenSource projects however are based on "mutually sharing
interests", with nobody having control over anybody. If you try to
pressurize people they will simply leave the government alone.

>  interferes 
> with the interests of the individual contributor (citizen) -- which is, of 
> course, inevitable -- does the individual contributor (citizen) have 
> meaningful recourse?
Well, but being vocal on lists, there hardly is any means for it.

Until recently FAB's most noteworthy feature was "complete absence".
That's definitely not a "strong leadership" and definitely is not
"providing guidance".

FESCO is a different story. It once was merely a technical committee,
then it was the community's counterpart/counterweight to RH, then there
was a time when it had been democratically elected ... nowadays, it
appears to be more as "Fedora administration" but a community
representation.

Ralf