Re: [orca-list] [Fwd: Status of IBM a11y]

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

> What happens to Orca if Sun Microsystems one day decides to issue a 
> similar statement

Our philosophy and actions to date have always included building the
community.  "Community" to me doesn't mean "Sun provides, everyone else
takes."  That's like treating community members as though they were
pigeons in park: feed them and feel good when you feel like it, let them
starve when you don't have the cash to buy food.

Instead of fostering the pigeons-in-a-park mentality, I view part of my
job as one of building a distributed team of capable contributors.  For
me, success would be indicated by Orca becoming driven by the community
so well that Orca would thrive even without corporate sponsorship.

To help move to this measurement of success, we actively work to provide
a productive, welcoming, and constructive atmosphere for users and
developers alike.  The result is that we have a relatively positive and
growing community where users help users and everyone has direct contact
with developers who listen.

There's no requirement that you have to work for Sun to contribute to
Orca: users and list members have ended up being developers themselves.
As a matter of fact, significant chunks of Orca have come from people
not on Sun's payroll.  

So, for how the IBM announcement is going to affect Orca?  We're going
to continue on the positive path we've always been on, which includes
the active development of the community.

What if Sun issues a similar statement?  If the community wants Orca to
live, it will live.  Things have a way of working out if you want them
to.  Having said that, keep in mind that we're hopefully on a very good
community path so that Orca will be able to thrive without corporate
sponsorship.

Will