Adrian Tymes writes:
> If a large number of the developers get dissatisfied with the decisions
> of the manager, any of the developers can take the code base and fork
> it. The central manager would have to screw up big time in order to
> provoke such a reaction, but it is possible - and that, alone, can keep
> the manager honest.
Yes, but then we're talking about two different projects. Since the
fork was provoked by a screwup on manager's part, one of them seems
destined to crash and burn. There *are* a number of OpenSource
screwups out there.
> > Anarchic software development does not work.
>
> Define "anarchic". No body of law ties, say, Linux developers to Linus
Headless. No central arbitrator. Everybody can touch everything, and
distribute the end result under the same name. I'm not saying it can't
work theoretically, but lacking angels it doesn't seem to work in
practice.
> Torvaldis. Linus can not hire or fire developers; he can only make
> acceptance of their code more or less likely. (He can't even absolutely
A great damn deal more or less likely. You try putting something into
the kernel what Linus (or Alan Cox, or any of the core team) thinks is
wrong.
> reject software on his own, though his negative review can go a long way
> towards rejecting certain code.) Promises, trust, and working code are
Code that works for you might not work for me, and vice
versa. Architectural decisions are frequently incompatible.
> all that unify the developers - and this lack of law is, technically,
> "anarchy", in the form that some promoters of anarchy envision as their
> utopia.
I still see no evidence that there are nontrivial OpenSource projects
which work by pure anarchy. Can you name an example?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:29 MDT