[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Interesting proposal about approachingEvergreengovernance

[Karen Schneider]

>
> ...and users' groups are for the most part, nonexistent.


That differs from project to project. For example, PostgreSQL has a very
vibrant user group community. Actually, a series of communities. MySQL
appears to as well. Linux has hundreds. Etc.

There seems to me to be a misunderstanding of how F/OSS works.


One of the beauties of OSS (to me, anyway) is that it is so very "out of the
box." There are very few rules for how it works (beyond some basic
freedom/licensing issues). This contrasts with the proprietary software
world, where the rules are fairly clear.  So there are many different
possible approaches and few absolutes.



> 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.


Of course, but that doesn't rule out how a community of users (represented,
for the sake of examples, by every library or organization running
Evergreen) can identify development priorities and see them achieved. You
are exactly right that for development to happen, money must be spent. In
some ways that is the easy part. It is determining how the various users
engage with the development process that presents more of a challenge.
There's no bad guy here -- Evergreen's developers, in and out of the
commercial side, are wonderful -- just a maturational issue common to
complex organisms.


> In F/OSS we'd rather talk about "community" than "users' groups." Community
> suggests openness and inclusion.


Certainly the semantics are up for discussion (and they are not absolute --
again, where is the OSS Rulebook?), but the existence of user groups doesn't
signal an "us versus them" point of view. It can really be the opposite --
representing a continuum of engagement.

...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.


Many have expressed an interest in collaborating on Evergreen's growth. That
is a positive thing. Evergreen is being actively developed at present, and
it also has a rapidly-growing community. For many newer Evergreen users, the
idea that we can collaborate on development very openly is new,
invigorating, and empowering. But frankly, it's been a couple of years since
"post it to a mailing list" has worked for Evergreen; it's just too large
and complex a community. The way most development is happening is that
libraries pay for it. (Funny how that works...) Now since that is already
happening, how can that be better coordinated for everyone's benefit?

-- 
-- 
| Karen G. Schneider
| Community Librarian
| Equinox Software Inc. "The Evergreen Experts"
| Toll-free: 1.877.Open.ILS (1.877.673.6457) x712
| kgs at esilibrary.com
| Web: http://www.esilibrary.com
| Be a part of the Evergreen International Conference, May 20-22, 2009!
| http://www.lyrasis.org/evergreen
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