[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Interesting proposal about approachingEvergreengovernance

[Jason Stephenson]

Quoting Karen Schneider <kgs at esilibrary.com>:


> but we will still need to find a really good working mechanism for the
> "voice of the community" to be heard.

Most F/OSS projects don't work like traditional software vendors and  
users' groups are for the most part, nonexistent.

The "voice of the community" is heard on mailing lists, IRC and other  
forums. The "voice of the community" is heard when people choose which  
software package to use. The "voice of the community" is usually  
answered with "patches welcome."

There seems to me to be a misunderstanding of how F/OSS works. Users  
don't generally get the features that they suggest unless one of the  
current developers (or someone with skills from the community) thinks  
the feature would be useful or interesting for the software to have or  
the user who wants the feature is willing to put up the resources to  
get the feature developed. (Resources here could be time, money, code,  
or whatever.) Volunteer programmers are under no obligation to anyone  
but themselves.

There isn't really a separation between the "vendor" and the "users"  
in a typical F/OSS project as Chris Cormack pointed out yesterday. In  
a sense, anyone who uses the software can also be a vendor, since they  
have the code and can make whatever changes they like. This doesn't,  
of course, mean that all changes will be accepted/approved by  
"mainstream."

Now, most F/OSS projects have some kind of a structure with someone  
considered the "owner" of the mainstream code branch, whether that  
owner is a corporate entity, an individual programmer, or a core team  
of volunteer developers. Still, unless you are paying these people's  
salaries, they are under no obligation to anyone.

In F/OSS we'd rather talk about "community" than "users' groups."  
Community suggests openness and inclusion. Users' group connotes, as  
Chris also implied yesterday, exclusion and a sort of us vs. them  
mentality. It also connotes an imbalance of power, where the  
developers have some sort of power over the helpless users who must  
band together to have their voices heard. In a healthy F/OSS community  
we are all equal, and if you don't like what the mainline developers  
are doing with a project, you are free to take the code and take it in  
another direction.

Remember that when you are using software that you got for free, no  
one is under any obligation to make it do what you want, or work the  
way that you want. Having that kind of power still costs money, even  
in Free software.

Jason