Re: [HACKERS] SAP and MySQL ... [and Benchmark] - Mailing list pgsql-general

I suggest anyone who's interested in how to organize an open source
project take a look at FreeBSD. It's the best run project I know of,
especially considering there's basically no corporate sponsorship.

In a nutshell, there's a community of a few hundred developers who have
commit access. Each year, they elect an executive board that oversees
the project as a whole. This does a great job of ensuring that no single
person can bully the project around, and it results it code that's much
better thought out, imho.

Hopefully someday pgsql will have enough developers to warrant such a
model. :)

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 11:22:08PM +0100, Ian Linwood wrote:
> Hello Jan,
>
> Friday, June 6, 2003, 9:12:24 PM, you wrote:
>
> > I think Open Source means more than that. It means especially Open for
> > ideas, open for input. Open for people and companies to join the team,
> > contribute and take part in the decision making. That all is totally
> > impossible in the MySQL project. Not because it could not be done, but
> > because the owner of the commercial product MySQL does not want it to
> > happen.
>
> Although this is an entirely valid opinion. I don't 100% agree with
> this point of view.
>
> Just because a project is open source (OS), doesn't mean that all and
> sundry should have an input.
>
> OS projects should be open to offers of contribution, but projects should
> reserve the right to reject that contribution.
>
> This seems, IMO, to be a plague in OS development. I clique of
> developers (regardless of how talented) or an individual, completely
> wrecks a project because they want to ensure their ideas are adopted.
>
> OS projects and closed source projects (or any other project for
> this matter) needs clear leadership, with someone willing to say yes
> or NO.
>
> Open source development is littered with shouting matches leading to
> forks, and general fcuk ups. This sometimes works for the better,
> unfortunately, most times it doesn't.
>
> I'm painting a pretty black picture and possibly giving you the opinion
> that I do not approve of OS development...nothing could be further from
> the truth. But I do think we need to get away from the *revisionism*
> ((c)Mao Tse-tung) that you seem to have fallen into.
>
> Please do not take offence at any comment I make - none are intended.
> Things are starting to get interesting... ;-)
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
>  Ian
>
>
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--
Jim C. Nasby (aka Decibel!)                    jim@nasby.net
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