Risks in codifying merit
Posted Mar 3, 2007 10:59 UTC (Sat) by
jmtapio (guest, #23124)
Parent article:
Codifying the meritocracy
I hope Fedora can make this work (good competition tends to be a good
thing for distributions), but I worry a bit about systems like these.
This resembles a lot the military rank system. What I have learned from
that field is that promotions tend to create tensions and bitterness
between people. When someone's "value" is codified officially, some people
become undervalued and some overvalued, and that always tends to lead to
pissed off people.
Secondly, in the military system usually the right to do something is not
directly bound to a certain rank. There people can be ordered to be able
to do something by their superiors just because they are trusted, even
though the person might not be officially highly ranked enough. I do hope
that Fedora does not end up limiting maintainer's contributions just
because they have not yet managed to rise enough in the official ranks.
The Debian system is nice because after someone has been qualified as a
developer, the rest of his/her rights depend mostly on how much key people
trust him/her. There is much less need in Debian to jump through the hoops
after the initial qualification.
Anyway, I hope Fedora can make this work.
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