From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 24794 invoked by alias); 22 Feb 2008 22:23:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 24784 invoked by uid 22791); 22 Feb 2008 22:23:37 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from fk-out-0910.google.com (HELO fk-out-0910.google.com) (209.85.128.185) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with ESMTP; Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:23:12 +0000 Received: by fk-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id 26so812373fkx.8 for ; Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:23:09 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.171.16 with SMTP id t16mr1064108bue.11.1203718989635; Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:23:09 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.82.162.12 with HTTP; Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:23:09 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <8f2776cb0802221423hc612d2dk16e4d2920035809e@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:36:00 -0000 From: "Jim Blandy" To: "Thomas Dineen" Subject: Re: New MI maintainer Cc: "Nick Roberts" , "Frank Ch. Eigler" , gdb@sourceware.org In-Reply-To: <47BF0478.1050209@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20080219191222.GA10196@caradoc.them.org> <18363.14758.855327.355215@kahikatea.snap.net.nz> <20080220190512.4550A8FC6D@kahikatea.snap.net.nz> <18364.37907.135913.269853@kahikatea.snap.net.nz> <18366.14530.875406.113087@kahikatea.snap.net.nz> <47BF0478.1050209@ix.netcom.com> X-Google-Sender-Auth: 5f58fafcab5d6d26 X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2008-02/txt/msg00197.txt.bz2 On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 9:20 AM, Thomas Dineen wrote: > From my observations the attitudes expressed > in this thread are NOT positive for the Open Source > Movement. I would suggest that your movement would > benefit from more openness and democracy. The procedure for making decisions that GDB has followed here is common among successful Open Source projects, with minor variations, and has been for a long time. For example, the Subversion project, which many consider to be well-run, operates in exactly this way: the group of "full committers" watches out for people to invite to become full committers, discusses possibilities and reaches decisions in private, makes invititations privately, and announces accepted invitations publicly. See also the book _Producing Open Source Software_, available on-line at http://producingoss.com/. In Free software, your ultimate protection from demagogues comes from the license itself: if a project is badly run but the software is valued, people who can run the project better will fork it, and compete for developers with the badly-run project. If the original project was, in fact, poorly run, it will eventually die off. In some cases, the old project gets re-absorbed into the new one, thus effecting a change in leadership without coercion.