The Fonz is the perfect Open Source analogy
- Feb 21, 2007 by the_angry_angel
No seriously, he is. Only cool things matter, to paraphrase Roy T. Fielding.
We work best as a collaboration when we give people the freedom to explore their own personal wild ideas (or even just reasonable ideas for which the solution has no clear timeline). If we artificially constrain the scope of what can be done based on the group's a priori perception, then we effectively go nowhere new (because collectives fear the new). The fact of the matter is that any one of us could, given adequate energy, rewrite the entire server in a couple months of focused time, and the only thing holding us back (aside from lack of said time) is the fear of acceptance at the end. We need to lose that fear.
This sums up how OS development should be. With the emergence of more and more technologies such as Compiz / Beryl, and the Apache "amsterdam" (or "D" or whatever it's going to be called), lowfat, where people are just doing stuff they want because they think it's cool, I can only hope we will only see more interesting things hit the world in the face, as the year progresses.
Comments
This is not just found in the opensource world. The perfect example is in Google's 20% project system.
If I wanted to take things further I could say that it is in some ways a model of the way our society works. We encourage entrepreneurs; we like people taking an idea and running with it and see if it works. If it fails there is always social security and good prospects of finding a job afterwards to fall back on.
At least, that is how it should work...