Re: [ox-en] Re: Cooperation in Free Projects
- From: Stefan Seefeld <seefeld sympatico.ca>
- Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:31:42 -0500
Stefan Merten wrote:
Hi StefanS and all!
4 days ago Stefan Seefeld wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
Cooperation in Free Projects ============================
I'm, again, confused as to the form
Well, sorry for the form. I'd be happy if there would be a more
complete text as well but I for one do not have the time for this
right now.
I don't think this is something that one can improve with more time.
You seem to try to put something rather complex into simple terms,
and that leads to wrong statements.
as well as the purpose of these
mails.
Well, the background is that I'm trying to improve the Oekonux
introduction by enhancing and extending it step by step. As such I'm
certainly interested in improvements / corrections. As part of this
process I'm posting the "slides" here so they can be discussed in one
of the standard Oekonux discussion devices.
Fine !
Is this a question,
Yes.
invitation for discussion,
Yes - as probably everything posted here.
or a set of
statements ?
Yes.
It certainly sounds very over-simplified, and partially even wrong,
in particular for what roles / boundaries concerns.
Then there is room for improvements :-) .
I'd be interested to go into detail, if this turns into a
discussion. :-)
Feel free and be sure I'll listen carefully :-) .
Well, at this time I'd even be reluctant to speak of a 'Free Software Movement'
as a single homogenous body, with consistent goals. And replacing 'Free Software'
by 'Open Source' doesn't make it better.
Instead, one should realize that there are many different 'players' and 'stakeholders'
involved, often with partially contradicting, but luckily also overlapping interests.
The whole FS vs. OSS discussion is a hint at that. (And I do believe it is meaningful
to discuss the difference between Free and Open, as these terms are used here, often
polemically.)
There are projects that emerge from people that try to solve their own (little)
problem, and there are projects way too big to be worked on on such a scale.
How projects are managed, i.e. whether there *is* any form of formal management,
also depends on the project's size (how many contributors there are, how the code
is structured, how the user community(ies) look like, etc.)
What we seem to be discussing here, and what all those projects thus have in
common, is that the result of the work is Free Software, i.e. the product is
freely distributable (where Free is defined in roughly the terms as discussed
at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html).
However, that in itself doesn't imply any particular way to organize the *production*
of Free Software. It's just a condition.
I'm very much interested into looking at different ways the production of Free Software
(or even free with a lowercase 'f') is organized in our time, why it is done that
way (in each different instance), and how this may affect our society.
There are certainly a lot of cases between fully proprietary and fully Free, where
business models have adapted to take advantage of Free Software, yet are firmly
rooted in modern capitalism with everything that entails.
To give a concrete example:
The GNU Compiler Collection (http://gcc.gnu.org/) is a huge project, with many
participating commercial entities, and a lot of commercial end-users. The heterogeneity
of the involved interests, as well as the sheer size of the projects requires good
project management. Thus, there is
* a steering comittee, which tries to coordinate all the involved interests
(http://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html)
* a release manager, who sets up a release schedule, and generally, a formal
development plan (http://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html)
* a list of 'maintainers' for the various modules, with various responsabilities
and rights.
There are a number of commercial entities involved in the development of GCC
(such as Apple, CodeSourcery, Google, IBM, RedHat), but there are also a substantial
number of contributors who work on it in their spare time.
Regards,
Stefan
--
...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...
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