[Pan-users] Re: Re: Pruning a thread rule

[Duncan]

Torstein Sunde posted
<address@hidden>, excerpted below,
 on Wed, 10 Sep 2003 04:23:34 +0200:

> Duncan wrote:
> 
>> Shouldn't that be "lead developer"?  I'm fairly new (~ two years) to
>> software libre, but have read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and some of
>> the other essays on the culture of open source.  As I understand
>> it,"lead developer" refers to the current application development
>> coordinator(while recognizing the input of others), while "maintainer"
>> refers to the packager for a specific distribution, [...]
> 
> It's a bit funny that you're asking this, because I probably would have
> used a different term than "maintainer" if I hadn't seen it in
> "Homesteading the Noosphere":
>   http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s22.html#rp
> which I read a few weeks ago on your recommendation.  ;-)

<g>  Like I said, it does seem correct according to FOLDOC, but from what
I've seen the language of the culture continues to evolve.

Did the essay and some of his others make the impression on you they did
on me (and the Netscape team as well, it would seem)?  I read that
probably about 6 months into switching to Linux, and had two reactions to
it.  1)  A lot of what he wrote in the "Bazaar" and "Noosphere", and a
couple others was a weird kind of deja vu, as it was /so/ /close/ to my
actual thoughts on the subject and why I switched, that it was like
reading someone making notes as they read my mind.  2) It created a
logical framework for much of what I'd seen mention of here and there, as
I prepared for the switch, but hadn't really seen presented as a whole,
before.  As well, it presented things in a decently researched way,
bringing in aspects I didn't know about, such as the whole "gift culture"
thing.

Some have observed that a lot of what he says describes the ideal, and
that reality doesn't always or even often get even real close to that, and
it's true we are all humans with egos and our own agendas that sometimes
clash, as with what's going on with XFree86 right now, and some just get
rubbed the wrong way by his style, but I still believe he's done a great
service to the movement, by observing and chronicling the culture and
idealistic movement of open source as he has.  I believe any good idealist
of any sort, be it political, religious, scientific, whatever, will have
to admit that despite the perfect ideals one or a group might hold,
reality doesn't always or even often closely match those ideals.  However,
it's still important for the culture to have mapped them out in some way,
for in understanding better what the ideal is, one has at least a better
idea of what to shoot for.

.. And thus I seem to have developed the role of resident open source
philosopher on the PAN lists..  <g>  For better or for worse..

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin