N. Alex Rupp's Blog

November 2003 Archives

Why I won't move my projects to Apache

Noel,

Thanks for your concern about this. I license software under the AFL so I can avoid legal entanglements relating to collective ownership of my property and conflicts of control over that property which derive from collective ownership, and also to grant greater rewards and incentives to future developers and users. Future versions of the ASL might correct this problem and give me incentive to relicense and get more involved with the ASF. If so, that's great. But it's only one factor.

I'm also trying to avoid political entanglements which threaten the development of software and (more importantly) the development of self-motivated, autonomous individual developers. What percentage of people get involved in Open Source because they want to improve their talents, their experience, their knowledge, so they can provide a better life for themselves and maybe for their families? Probably most of them. Possibly all of them.

I think the need to develop a strong community can work to the detriment of individual development. There are hundreds of people on this list who are hungry to contribute and develop their skills through the improvement of the community but who simply don't have the experience or opportunity to function as autonomous individuals. The current structure of the ASF simply does not scale to meet the demand generated by this project.

So the community has a couple of options, maybe more. They can either add more layers of management and tell people exactly what they should do in order to include more people in development and grow the active community (I wouldn't advise this), or they can develop some sort of mentoring or sponsoring program in which candidates are picked out of the list by one of the committers and sponsored for a period of time in order to train them about the workings of the technology and the community. The apprentices who show the most initiative and mastery over the technology and are socially able to perform as full members of the community could then graduate to committer status and can choose their own apprentice (or even two or three apprentices if they think they can handle it). This master/apprentice system has been used with great success for thousands of years. It contributes to the development of a strong community by creating the social incentives to lift up newcomers and to recognize talent before it gets frustrated and leaves.

I don't know, Noel. I have a strong sense that what I'm doing for this project is good for the people around here and good for me. I don't need you guys breathing down my neck all the time with rules and politics. I'm here to write code and have fun, and with comments like those Roy made last night and which Greg has made from time to time, I don't feel I can do much of either unless I'm willing to go it alone. I consider this the failure of the ASF and wish that its members would do something to detoxify the environment. Roys reasons might have been genuine but his conduct was intolerable.

I can't speak for anyone else around here, but I want to produce good software more than I need the approval of the ASF, and I'm not afraid to go it alone if it means I can work in peace.

--
N.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Noel J. Bergman" 
To: 
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 3:45 PM
Subject: RE: new console-swing team


> Matt Kurjanowicz wrote:
> 
> > Ryan Sonnek wrote:
> > > Could this new module be worked upon at the sourceforge project
> > > (service-cache) alongside the console-web?  This would allow non-ASF
> > > commiters to progress on it, and submit patches and updates to the
> > > geronimo project.
> 
> > I'm already a developer at service-cache, so we can host it there.  The
> only
> > caveat is that there everything is licensed as the Academic Free License
> (v.
> > 2.0).  I'd rather stick with that then use the ASL v.1.1.
> 
> Is there a reason why http://sourceforge.net/projects/service-cache/ is not
> hosted here?  If there is a need to bring in new component projects and new
> committers, that should be addressed.  You want to grow a larger and more
> diverse active Geronimo committer community.
> 
> --- Noel

Government (as it would be expressed in Java)

package nature.law.society.human;

/**
 * Obviously, the more complex this class becomes,
 * the less efficient it becomes, so I intentionally 
 * left it simple, but you can feel free to extend it if 
 * you wish.  Be creative!
 *
 * @author N. Alex Rupp
 */
public class Government extends Monopoly {

    public Justice dispenseRetributiveJustice(
        Price monopolisticPrice) {

        if(monopolisticPrice.isPaid()) {
            // the poll checking is totally optional
            if(Beaurocrat.checkPolls().equals("favorable")) {
                return CoerciveAuthority.
                    exactRetributiveJustice();
            }
        } 
        return null;  // TODO: someone log this please
    }
}

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.