Re: Hackers, should we elect them ?

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

Bruce is entirely correct...

Something like Gnome might have happened very much earlier had the X 
Consortium not be dominated by the member companies, but run by those 
individuals doing the real work.  The unfortunately side effect is that 
some people who hack also have to do some "pointy haired" work from 
time to time.  W3C works somewhat better than the X consortium primarily 
in that it is so huge that effectively anyone is a member: even here, 
however, it has cultural barriers that have hurt it. It is vital to honor
the people who do the work properly.

X development was much more vital before the X consortium existed, and 
has become vital again that for all intents and purposes, it doesn't exist, 
and is again run by the hackers.

With 20-20 hindsight, I believe that the biggest mistake we made with 
X was the X Consortium.

On the other hand, it isn't clear that the Internet was up to what was
needed when the X consortium was founded, so whether a different course
was possible then is not at all clear.  Sigh...

In any case, I believe we want a board dominated by INDIVIDUALS who
keep the project being run by those doing the real work to "preserve the
magic".
				- Jim



> Sender: foundation-list-admin gnome org
> From: bruce perens com (Bruce Perens)
> Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 22:45:32 -0700 (PDT)
> To: foundation-list gnome org, hadess writeme com
> Subject: Re: Hackers, should we elect them ?
> -----
> From: Hadess <hadess writeme com>
> > I just found out that there was a mailing-list to discuss the elections.
> > I'd be interested to know why I should elect a hacker...
> 
> We need at least a "hacker sensibility" or we will _kill_the_magic_.
> 
> The magic of GNOME happens because the project is "owned" by hackers,
> not by the X Consortium, or a joint venture of Intel, IBM, and Apple, etc.
> Think of all of those projects they did that didn't hit the mark in the way
> that GNOME is if they made any useful code at all.
> 
> Yes, we must balance the loss of taking their time from coding against
> the benefit of keeping the project in the right hands.
> 
>         Thanks
> 
>         Bruce
> 
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--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg pa dec com