d.org

[Gregor Richards]

Open Source software is anarchy.  Everyone has the power to fork(), and 
people are only prevented from doing so by their own desire for lack of 
responsibility.  The only thing that keeps people "in power" is this 
struggle of laziness against desires.

The only force there is which causes leadership in this inherantly 
anarchical structure is natural tendency towards leadership and, in 
fact, tendency towards sound code.

This usually make for good leaders.  Don't try to control it with rules.

Furthermore, rules are only as powerful as the ability to enforce them, 
and the ability to enforce them in this scenario is precisely nil.  If 
Alek Foo is head of the Megawidgets project, and Barkley Bar feels like 
forking it into the Überwodgets project, that is his right.  If it's 
better, he will find himself in a position of power, previously held by 
Alek Foo.  This is the nature of things.

It's fairly silly for me to be arguing this anyway, since you and I both 
know that (thankfully) no such effort for organization will ever succeed.

Vive la révolution constante!

  - Gregor Richards


Knud Sørensen wrote:
> This is NOT about a new d website :-)
> 
> There have lately been a lot of discussion about handing over phobos 
> to a community based standard library effort.
> 
> A natural question is then how to organise such a community effort.
> 
> I would here like to suggest that we try to use a bottom-up organisation
> structure.
> 
> The organisation is based on project groups lets say the names is phobos,
> mango, ares, and gcd. 
> 
> Every project group chose a leader, the leaders role is to set goal for
> the group and make decisions for the group.
> 
> But every member of the group have the right to challenge the leader
> for his position. 
> When that happens the group vote between the two candidates.
> Such that if the leader have made some decisions which is out of line 
> with the groups wishes, then he will be replaced very fast.
> If a member have unsuccessful challenges the leader then 
> he can't challenges for the next 3 months, 
> such that the leader gets time to work. (other members might still
> challenges him)
> 
> Now the group of project leaders form a meta group 
> they choose a leader for the d organisation, which is elect
> in the same way.
> 
> (If anyone knows of web software which make it possible to
> organise this type of organisation then please let me know.)
> 
> Let take a look how it compare to other type of organisation.
> 
> 1)
> 
> In a top-down organisation advancement is decided by promotion.
> the leaders at the top decide how get to be the next level leaders.
> The weakness by this type organisation is that many times you 
> get promotes to incompetents. In the way that if you do a good job 
> you get promoted up, until you reach a position where you 
> don't do well and then you get stuck there.
> Another weakness is that they are easy to takeover. 
> If another organisation what to takeover a top-down organisation 
> they secretly place a few good man in the organisation.
> When one of these man is promoted, then he start to favour 
> the other men from that organisation and soon, 
> they will raise to the top in the top-down organisation.
> 
> The bottom-up organisation don't have this weakness, 
> if a leader is incompetent he will be replaced soon 
> after a better candidate arrives.
> To takeover a bottom-up organisation you will have to replace 
> most of it members not only the top ones. 
> 
> 2)
> 
> Now comparing to a democratic selected organisation.
> This type of organisation is typical selected from a huge number of
> voters and each member is selected for one period at the time.  
> Decisions in this type of organisation is typical based on a vote.
> 
> The weakness in this type of organisation is that its members
> is typical based on how good a campaign they make before the election.
> This typical depends on factors like how many money that they have for
> the campaign, and that they are good at making false promises.  
> 
> Another weakness is that decision by voting can be very slow 
> and that it also require many members to study a subject in detail to make
> a good decision, which is rarely the case.
> 
> In a bottom-up organisation the leaders is not selected for a given
> period of time, so they can be replaced if there work is not in line 
> with there promises and it is the leaders responsibility to make a 
> decision so it can be made fast if it have to or be delayed to the right set of details is known.
>   
> 3) In a grass root organisation every member do what he/she feels is best
> to archive a common goal.
> 
> The weakness is that some work might be done twice and some might not be
> done at all.
> In a bottom-up organisation there is a leader to ensure that the
> organisation is working smart, but at the same time the election system 
> ensure that the leaders decision never is to far away from what the
> members feel is best.
> 
> Sorry for the long message.
> 
> Knud
>