Re: Arabeyes Charter Proposal

["Chahine M. Hamila" <mch at chaham dot com>]

Nadim Shaikli a *crit :

>
> If it were about accountability, then drop the names and titles and
> elevate the project above everyone (you, me, him, ...)

As I told you, you can put the names you want. If you want no name, then you can
call the ones who take care of L10N for example,
"The-one-who-supervises-most-localization-work-in-arabeyes". Come on now, this is
being a ridiculous battle about semantics.

> and ink out tasks
> and deliverables (yes details) people should be "accountable" for and
> time-lines for delivery.

Man, I have quite a few things in my life to do, and can't always commit to
deliver at given deadlines with arabeyes. We are volunteers, and unless you make
it earn me a decent living, it will have to count with my life's priorities.

>  Remove any doubts about any potential sought-after
> or implicit personal gains by attempting to gain and seeking a purity of
> purpose.

Man, why don't you just ASSUME we are not seeking personal stuff out of this? Is
it because you think that way? And tell me, what arabeyes can give me for example
that life hasn't already given me??? This is sick man, I mean, how can a
cyberproject help me impress chicks, or impress potential clients with the casual
amateur glitches or have my hometown's folks wait for me every return at the
airport as the coming Messiah?
And let's suppose for a second that we do it for appearing on Al-Jazeera as the
Arab World's Saviors... What's the problem if that gets the job done, while
trying to avoid it just ruins it?

>
> Having hierarchy doesn't necessarily mean anything - Enron anyone ?

IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Dell, HP, Total, ELF, Mercedes, Boeing, Telefonica, Jazztel,
Gateway, NBC, CNN, Dizney, Corel, Yahoo!, Amazon, and thousands of others, can
you imagine these without a structure. Come on, structure doesn't prevent
failure, but its absence provokes it, definitely. Come on Nadim, are you just
arguing for the sake of arguing or didn't you really know that???

>
> How many projects out there are Bazaar vs. Cathedral and which has most
> linux projects adopted (including linus).

I'm afraid you are misunderstand Raymond's Bazaar model (I am not a fan of E.
Raymond btw). Bazaar's model introduces a dose of variance in the Cathedral
model, in that sense that, folks involved in the project will do what they want
in an open way. It is not the closed way with set up ways by a few and others
under their commands to execute.
But the bazaar model never implied absence of structure. In fact, the model you
quote DO have a structure. Linus has the last word on what gets in the kernel,
and you might chose to make a change to his braindamaged monolithic kernel
architecture, he will probably refuse it and it won't get into the kernel without
having anyone else having a say in that. So here, this charter is certainly more
democratic than Linus's run of Linux's development. In addition to that, there's
a coordinator who helps him. Until a few months ago, it was Alan Cox, the author
of most of the initial network layer, and then Alan (and the kid who took his
position now) was aided by a few others.
In fact, all successful open projects function in a way very similar to the one
set in this charter, sometimes in a mode that is much more opaque than what has
been proposed here. Gnome, Apache, KDE, XFree86, Debian, Linux, GNU, all are run
this way.

>
> I've done a variety of things (if memory serves), but I can't say that
> I will undertake PR.  I will do what I can to bring linux to Arabs without
> getting in the way of any of you coordinators.

Nadim, see? here you are breaking the cooperative mode. How is the "you
coordinators" supposed to create a cooperative athmosphere when both the hostile
tone and the meaning of it is set to emphasize a divide in the team?
Now, instead of vague claims of "bringing linux to Arabs" which tens have tried
before you and failed with more work, what are you going to do concretely about
it? What useful thing are you going to do about it knowing that we are supposed
to work as a team? What would make you different from - more necessary than -
the tens of volunteers in there?

>
> Isam's vote is irrelevant (per your charter) - even if he votes no
> the decision's been made.

Nadim, I am not going to speak for Isam here, but this is the second time in a
day you give me the impression you're considering Isam to be a half witted peon.
I think Isam can speak for himself but I guess he doesn't need you to tell that
his work is our trash (what have you done that's better than Isam's work?) or
that Isam's vote is irrelevant. I happen to think on the contrary that Isam's
vote is important, very much for the solidity of this team at least which you
don't seem to care much about since you've constantly been behaving in a way that
rifts it in gangs (you vs us mentality all the time).

Salaam,
Chahine