Conduct (Re: World Domination?)

[Michele Ravani]

Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-04-14 at 03:11 +0200, Philippe Landau wrote:
> 
>>>>>This isn't persecution; it's civilization.  
>>
>>I'm not too keen on having a software company define for me
>>what is civilisation. A little humility would be much appreciated.
>>Canonical/Ubuntu is not the beginning and the end.
> 
> 
> Really, Phillipe , this is absurd. Matt clearly was expressing his
> opinion, not a company or Ubuntu policy.
> 
> As for humility, my frank impression is that you are behaving as if the
> world revolved around your opinions. Hint: it doesn't.
> 
> It was entertaining for a while. Now it's become merely tedious.
> 
> 
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Peter Garrett
> 
> 

Philippe

Although disagreeing on the 'tedious' bit, I do agree that this is kind 
of getting out of bands. Matt's reaction is understandable as your posts 
criticize or express doubts about his beliefs (at least about what I 
assume to be his beliefs).

It is like arguing that people spending their life helping others are 
doing it only to get a selfish kick of self esteem. This may be true, 
but  I'd rather have them do the work, no matter what their reasons are, 
because the result is positive.

I appreciate that this is a dangerous statement, but on the other hand 
beliefs discussions have been the seed of wars since the dawn of time.
However, the situation in the OSS movement is radically different as it 
always gives people the choice of moving away and 'build' a 'society' 
based on their beliefs. The best of it all is that they can take with 
them (and continue to do so) what every other 'society' has done and 
produced, which in a sense removes the 'need' for belief fights.

This doesn't mean that such discussions are useless, but they can be 
performed on another level and with some detachment.

Every OSS project is based on an intellectual and technical meritocracy. 
This means that at the beginning it is de-facto a dictatorship  or an 
oligarchy until the circle of the 'important voices' widens.
This gives you a powerful tool. If you think that Ubuntu is taking wrong 
(technological) turns, you can work on alternative solutions, propose 
them and see them implemented. I am convinced that if they are superior 
to the current ones, the team will take them.

In the current situation, I think a few are worried about the 'why' 
Ubuntu is coming along, we are more concerned with the 'what' it is 
delivering. This doesn't mean that the 'why' leaves one completely cold, 
but it isn't as important as getting a top distro on our machines.

World domination is far away and there is still plenty of choice ...

Regs
  M