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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Next release called 1.2? We're not getting anywhere!
From:       Rik Hemsley <rik () rikkus ! demon ! co ! uk>
Date:       1999-08-25 17:16:46
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On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Torsten Rahn wrote:
>    Of course the coordinator should make his decisions based on 
>    the discussions that are made -- especially if they 
>    are essential for the future of the project. But of course he 
>    is free to decide something else than the majority of the people. 
>    Of course he risks thereby that his leadership won't be accepted 
>    by the majority anymore. 

Spot on. Open Source projects cannot be run as a democracy because, as Torsten
says, you can't force developers to write what you want, though of course by
definition we're supposed to keep an open mind.

The people with the control over the software are those who author it, and
rightly so - I wouldn't like someone reformatting my code and changing its
license.

If non-contributors want to have a say in a project, they can simply ask
nicely. If this doesn't get them what they want, their only option is to create
a new project based on the same foundations. This is what the Open Source model
is about. You can take a look at what Caldera has done to KDE to see one
example of how this has already been done.

I'm currently developing kab2. The author of kab1 is Mirko Sucker. Simon
Hausmann recently contacted me regarding using CORBA for kab2. Now, I could
refuse to put CORBA support into kab2 if I wanted (not that I do), but I'd have
to ask Mirko. While I've done the design and the code for kab2 I still bow to
the owner of the kab project. If Mirko and I disagree, then Mirko gets his way
and I have to maintain my version outside the KDE source tree.

Just think about why we have governments if you don't understand this. A
goverment does not make decisions based on the will of the majority. The
majority are often plain wrong, and even if they aren't, they don't have the
time to vote on every decision.

Finally:
It might be useful if decisions like this were deferred to the PR team by
the core team. This involves the core team trusting the judgement of the PR
team, but it would also take non-development related issues like this away from
kde-devel.

Cheers,
Rik

-- 
KDE - Colour Outside The Lines - http://www.kde.org

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