{"id":1332,"date":"2006-03-15T02:33:32","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/on-decision-making\/"},"modified":"2006-03-15T02:33:32","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T00:33:32","slug":"on-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/on-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"on decision-making."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\tPinky:<\/strong> What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?
\n\t\tBrain:<\/strong> The same thing we do everynight, Pinky.
\n\t\tPinky:<\/strong> What’s that?
\n\t\tBrain:<\/strong> …I have no idea.\n\t<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\t\tI think a lot of us Open Source people are taking part in a community hoping that the whole
\nwill be greater, not less than the sum of its parts. That assumption is also the basis for
\ndemocracy, although the real effect is questionable in some cases. We’re lucky, since we don’t have
\nto discuss that. Wait, we have. Meritocracy<\/a>
\nhas been the government system in KDE for quite some time, but recently we saw a shift towards democracy<\/a>. While I’m pretty convinced that
\ndemocracy can suck badly, and especially in merit-based communities, there are certainly some
\npositive effects. In my opinion these have a lot to do with the meritocracy not having been explicit
\nenough, and are as such very Open Sourcish. Open Sourcish since explicit sharing of skills is
\ncertainly not one of the strengths of most Open Source communities. Tacit knowledge is what we’re
\ngood at and we need to find ways to make that knowledge more easily available to others<\/a>
\nif we want to open up for new<\/a>
\ncontributors<\/a>. And we can since we might just
\nhave solved one of our biggest problems that has been slowing down the development process:
\nscalability of the group decision-making process. Enter our Technical Working Group<\/em>.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tI am really happy to see that decision-making actually is happening again. For a major new
\nrelease, someone has to do the job of trying to get the heads into the same direction, and that is
\nno fun. Coding is fun. Dealing with politics is not. What I’m missing sometimes is some sort of
\nshared vision. Sure, that doesn’t fit into a naturally grown community like most Open Source
\nprojects are, but at least it’s a good idea to remember that making decisions and communicating them
\nis an essential topping for the pizza that’s called world domination. Bottom line: We went far
\nbeyond what’s supposed to work “together”, and we’ve certainly proven the mythical man month<\/a> wrong in more than one
\naspect. But if we want to keep doing so, guidance is certainly needed. And that’s what I’d like the
\nTechnical Working Group to give to KDE. Guidance, and a clear direction.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\tIn Patterns of Governance in Open Source<\/em> by Steve Weber (Published in Open Sources 2.0 – The continuing
\nevolution<\/a>), the author proposes to design the governance institutions in ways that facilitate
\ninformation paths, rather than the other way round. Sounds like a no-brainer, sure. Now try to think
\nabout the complex information structure in most Open Source projects. That’s where I’m getting
\ndizzy. Nevertheless we did quite a good job, since our decision-making-dudes are respected,
\nlong-time contributors and as such, they’re also information hubs within the community.<\/p>\n

Well done, KDE.\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pinky: What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? Brain: The same thing we do everynight, Pinky. Pinky: What’s that? Brain: …I have no idea. I think a lot of us Open Source people are taking part in a community hoping that the whole will be greater, not less than the sum of its… Continue reading on decision-making.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}