Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Hi Jon,

As made clear elsewhere in the thread, I did not at all disagree with Dan's points about "design by committee" or the efficiency and effectiveness of small teams. He's absolutely right, and I can't imagine anyone involved in software engineering projects (FOSS or not) would be willing to disagree.

It boils down to Alan's vastly more eloquent (and less cantankerous) comparison of "design by community" and "design IN community". What we're seeing in GNOME is large portions of this design and agenda-setting being taken out of the commons, mostly because it's just too hard. What we need to focus on is fixing that *within GNOME*, to the benefit of everyone involved, instead of lazily fixing it by (briefly) stepping out of the community development model.

... and this is definitely not a problem exclusive to Novell. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It's a problem we have all contributed to, as individuals *and* organisational contributors.

Thanks,

- Jeff