Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Well, whether or not it has anything to do with Novell and XGL, the point
I was trying to make is simply this. If the GNOME community feels
threatened by large code drops and private development efforts, the GNOME
community's response should simply be to not tolerate it. If you choose
not to tolerate it, then it is immediately of no threat to your community
(unless, of course, you used a license like the BSD license that would
allow someone to take your code and run).

Don't 'whine' about it to Novell or anyone else. Tell them that you
appreciate their great contribution, but that huge code drops aren't easy
to merge. It may be that the only way to make your point is to let time
pass and let the problem illustrate itself.

This, by the way, is why the occasional flames from people like Linus are
exceptionally valuable - because it puts forth a strong, commanding
position. And it's clear that the effect this has had on Linux is that
companies interested in Linux development *adapt* to support its
procedures.

I remember a comment Andrew Morton made in an interview. I'm
paraphrasing, but basically he gave an example of how IBM management
adapted. The IBM bosses couldn't simply tell their engineers "We need
feature X in the kernel by Friday". The picture Andrew painted was such
that when IBM management asked for something objectionable, the answer
they got back wasn't "the kernel guys won't accept this," rather, "we
won't accept this".

Of course, they wouldn't be empowered to say such things if that weren't
made possible by good open source management. Are you taking notes?