Quoting Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk>:
Let's look at this from the OS "community" point of view...
We on this mailing list are part of the clamav open source community...
As such, it is not clamav who failed, but it is us, the clamav
open source community, who failed...
When clamav asked about doing this, we failed to:
1) Think about how it would affect others rather than ourselves
2) Provide alternative ideas for their consideration
3) Urge them to reconsider, or to do more to mitigate the problems it might
cause
4) Verify that the needed info if the change does happen is widely
available to others, such as:
a) that the FAQ was updated for this
b) that we notified the various packagers and distributions about it
c) that we got the word out via slashdot, blogs, mailing lists, etc.
I could go on. But the point is, if you believe in "an active open source
community" around a project, then we failed. We were not active, we didn't
act like a community. I at least was just selfish. I thought, yeah, I
can live with that. That won't impact me in any real way. I don't have
a problem with that. I didn't think about others. I didn't try to come
up with other solutions. I didn't try to foresee problems and try to
correct them. I didn't think to check that the documentation was in place.
I didn't think to notify distributions, or packagers, or any one else. I
didn't seek to publicize this in either a positive or negative light. In
short, I failed as a community member. And a lot of others did too.
So let's learn from this. Let's make this a better community around
clamav. The best way to stop this kind of stuff is to take an active
role in the community, not to bitch about it to the project leaders after
we fail to show any interest in it.
Yes, we all know that something had to be done, but just two days
ago, the argument most definitely was that there was **NO** other
option - absolutely no other option and this was the **ONLY** way to
do it.
For six months, there was NO argument at all. That is where the system
failed... What happened in the last week is not the problem. It is the
fall out of the problem. The problem is apathy. The solution is an active
community.
--
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin
Go Longhorns!
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