on 7/8/03 12:56 PM Ted Leung wrote: > +1 > > I am planning to meet Cliff Schimdt in person at OSCon later this week. > I will also be happy to be the official shepherd during incubation.
I fully trust both Steven's and Ted's "mentoring" abilities. I'm happy that people like Andy keep the 'corporate paranoia' alarm on, we have been harmed by this too much in the past, but I, like Greg, sense the intention of doing good and work hard to pay off the benefit of being part of the foundation. But given my past experiences, I foresee one potential problem that I would like to show, so that both the XMLBeans committers and the mentors can start tuning their alarms for it. First a few reminding statements: 1) incubation is about judging the quality of community development in the diverse open and meritocratic spirit of the ASF. It is *NOT* about judging technical merits. We let Darwin take care of that because no mentor, no ASF member should judge a technology being proposed, since this might stop technological evolution. 2) incubation is about protecting the foundation name from being abused. it should *NOT* be tollerated that the companies behind the incubated project use the apache name for marketing promotion without indicating the incubation status of the project. Now, I see one potential big risk: idea ownership. Meritocracy is developed if there is openness to alternative thinking, otherwise, it becomes oligarcy and it doesn't evolve. darwinistically speaking, it simply dies out of lack of genetical mutation and adaptability to the environment is too low. I suggest the mentors to tune their community-dynamics sensors to this. To the XMLBeans developers, expecially to the main architects, my suggestion is different: allow diversity of opinion, allow people to experiment, allow paths that you don't like to be tried out. You will find out that the real value of open development is exactly this: learning new things and understanding that, no matter how smart you are, there is always somebody smarter than you. If you allow him/her in, they will be part of your team, if not, they will be outside, probably harming your community by removing energy from it. being attached to your design ideas is more harmful that it seems and not only because the foundation might cancel incubation and stop development because of it, but also because it prevents you from learning and growing, as developers and, more important, human beings. Having said this, you get my +1 -- Stefano. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
