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Re: [LI] Message from RMS.
>>"Arun" == Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Arun> On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 04:31:59PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> No. I am implying that lots of commercial companies merely
>> ripped off the BSD fee work (Sun, Digital, Data General), branded it,
>> and no benefit accrued to the community from these advances.
Arun> But it didn't hurt any of the developers in any way. They were just
Arun> as free. Empire building was not their goal.
And therin lies the differnce in philosophies. The BSD people
are content with whatever they have, they give the code off, and want
nothing in return. The GPL folks are more into share and share alike
-- I scratch your back, you scratvh mine philosophy.
The BSD folks often characterize their code give away as
charity, the GPL folks tend to talk more about community building.
I personally prefer the latter. I still retain vestiges of Ayn
Rand's "The virtue of selfishness" and "Atlas Shrugged".
Arun> I don't know any of the (Free)BSD developers personally - but I
Arun> like their organization - what appears to be merit based core
Arun> team structure, as opposed to dictatorships.
The problem is determining ``merit''. And the inherent
snobbery in the *BSD teams does not help.
As far as social structures go, I prefer Debian -- we are an
independent lot, and we elect our Project leaders for a term. No
``core'' members lording it over all comers. We realize that some
times decisions need to be made swiftly, or there are posts that
require responsibility (like release management) that need to come
with commensurate authority, and we *choose* to submit to elected
officers.
Decisions are determined, to the greatest extent possible, by
consensus (with the elected officers having the duty and the right to
step in and unstick stalled debates). Technical issues are rarely
open to voting -- popularity is not a substitute for correctness.
However, matters of policy and opinion are often decided by voting
amongst (possible subsets of) the member body.
I much prefer this to the strict, elitist heirarchy that *BSD
folks are stuck with.
As to dictatorships, you should be aware that even the Linux
kernel is now closer to an oligarchy than a dictatorship. ;-)
manoj
--
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@xxxxxxxxxx> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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