Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: What is an OpenACS Citizen?

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Posted by Torben Brosten on
Following-up on Rafael Calvo's comments, Eric S. Raymond has written extensively about the open-source culture. Many of his observations about "How to become a Hacker"[1] are relevant to leadership qualities for OpenACS.

Last night, I re-read a copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar [2] that's been heavily worn with highlights, bookmarks and scribblings in the margins. The relevant points are too numerous to repeat here, but I would like to note one point in particular, because I believe it describes how OpenACS.org (the community) has tackled problems with the complex system OpenACS. And, why the politics (power dynamics) of OpenACS should not be the focus for leading OpenACS.

quote:

..Another vital factor was the development of a leadership style and set of cooperative customs that could allow developers to attract co-developers and get maximum leverage out of the medium.

But what is this leadership style and what are these customs? They cannot be based on power relationships--and even if they could be, leadership by coercion would not produce the results we see.  Weinberg quotes the autobiography of the 19th-century Russian anarchist Pyotr Alexeyvich Kropotkin's <em>Memoirs of a Revolutionist</em> to good effect on this subject:

Having been brought up in a serf-owner's family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing and the like.  But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with [free] men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, i began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding.  The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned, and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.

previous quote from pages 51-52, (Jan 2001 ed.) Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Raymond has written a second paper, entitled "Homesteading the Noosphere"[3] where his "analysis has large implications for anyone interested in organizing large-scale intellectual collaborations" to which I believe coordinating the variety of expertise requirements for OpenACS development parallel "organizing large-scale collaborations" even if the number  of core-developers remain small. The tool set is designed for scalable and high-demand/performance websites, where development decisions have far-reaching impacts on tens of thousands or more end-users.

1. http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

2. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/index.html

3. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/