Responding to McCoy's e-mail in-line:
> 1. Other than some form of moderation (which I’m not sure there is a need > for), I’m not sure how you modulate perceived loud voices. In fact, I > would argue that the louder you are, the more you run the risk of being > perceived as unpersuasive (like the old lawyer adage: “when the law favors > you, pound the law; when the facts favor you, pound the facts; when neither > the law nor the facts favor you, pound the table.”) > For what it's worth, I think if the decision process was more clear & transparent, it would be easier to tell whether or not "loud voices" actually do carry undue influence. As things stand now, I think you could construct pretty strong arguments going either way - which is a huge part of the problem. The other half of this is community & discussion moderation, which I think is also a very important point, but also worth its own discussion. > 2. I talk about open source licensing with some frequency, and almost > always suggest that people should pay more attention to, and chime in if > appropriate, this process. Infinite eyes make all license bugs shallow and > such. How one accounts for the opinions of a “silent majority” I have no > idea, other than having some sort of anonymous voting mechanism (and would > such a mechanism be restricted to OSI members – like board elections – or > would it be open to anyone caring to vote?) > So, I think I'm actually a fairly good example of this. I do not consider myself more knowledgeable than anyone I've seen post on the lists in the last few years. I'm not a lawyer, and if anything I would say I'm much _less_ knowledgeable about some of the finer details than most of the active contributors. That said, and indeed even for those reasons, I think my opinions regarding many of the discussions could be some of the most helpful. But, I have rarely wanted to participate in the debates. My point, here, is that it's important and good to say, "the process is open and anyone can contribute," but that doesn't mean that everyone actually feels welcome to do so, or that their opinions would be valued. I've heard from others who have echoed this sentiment as their reason for not participating, as well. > I also think it would interesting to compare whether decision-making on > license approval is substantially different than the way in which > decision-making is done for code contributions to large open source > projects with maintainers (or subsystem maintainers). > One key difference, here, is that almost all maintainers (whether for full projects or partial subsystems) exercise absolute authority. They obviously see and consider input from the developer community, but ultimately they make an executive decision about whether or not something gets merged. L-R's decisions are markedly more complex, I think. Cheers, Ben > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@lists.opensource.org > > http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org >
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