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How the FlightGear project works: Difference between revisions
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How the FlightGear project works (view source)
Revision as of 17:08, 8 February 2012
, 8 February 2012→The dependency structure
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So, we would like to ask you to keep these factor in mind when proposing changes and when voicing recommendations, and when discussing such issues with fellow community members, publicly or privately. | So, we would like to ask you to keep these factor in mind when proposing changes and when voicing recommendations, and when discussing such issues with fellow community members, publicly or privately. | ||
= The | = Some comments on elitism = | ||
Every once in a while, people complain that they feel elitism is a major problem in the FlightGear project. | |||
The notion you may have in mind when you talk about 'elitism' is that everyone should be equal - applied to Flightgear, that everyone's opinion of how things should be heard and should matter about equally. In real life, that's how democracy works - everyone gets a say how to run a state. But there are many situations which do not work like this. Consider a shareholder's meeting - here influence is proportional to the investment. If I meet with 100 other shareholders, but I own 60% of the stock of a company, I alone get to decide what will happen. Or consider a scientific conference - here your influence is proportional to your expertise. You may have your favourite theory why Darwin was wrong, or why climate change is a fluke, but without some scientific merits, you won't be even admitted to the room, and it takes quite a bit more of reputation to get a talk. | |||
All these cases have nothing to do with elitism. In the first case (shareholder), the argument is fairness - if I take 10% of the risk of an enterprise and you take 1%, it is hardly fair that we should have the same voting rights. In the second case (science conference), the argument is efficiency - the amount of potential information is so huge that a careful filtering needs to be done in order to ensure that people spend their time processing relevant information - the scientific filter eliminates time-wasters up front (well, not all of them, as I can state from experience). You couldn't run either a shareholder's meeting or a science conference based on 'everyone is equal' - because while everyone is indeed equal in value as a human being, not everyone is equal in ability, expertise, or is equally involved in risk, work, ...- that's a fact, and to pretend otherwise doesn't help. | |||
You may call that elitism if you like, but my definition of elitism would be that a transfer takes place, i.e. that someone who owns 60% of the shares of a company starts to believe that he should not only get to say how the company is run, but also should get more influence in other areas outside his field of expertise, in other words, he starts to feel that his value as a human being is enhanced. | |||
Experience shows that it makes a lot of sense not to uphold the pretense that everyone is equal with respect to some property when this is in fact not the case. I've been observing internet language communities over the last 10 years where you have basically two classes of users - those who know the language in question, and those who ask questions as they are trying to learn. Almost without exception, communities which treated everyone equal did not work - the experienced users were annoyed at being interrupted in technical discussions, were told that everyone has the same right to enter a discussion, decided that they'd rather discuss in a place without interruptions, thus the communities were left with the users who bring only questions with no experts left to answer them, being unable to get answers they also left and the communities died. The communities which respected expertise worked - it's better to start as low-influence user in a forum and get your questions answered than to start as equal-influence user in a forum and not get your question answered. | |||
= FlightGear is a meritocracy = | |||
Flightgear, as best as we have managed to understand the somewhat opaque workings in core development, is a meritocracy - your influence is proportional to the amount of work you do for the project. It's not closed, i.e. you can, if you invest a lot of work into the project, work yourself into a position where you have a lot of influence even starting today from zero. | Flightgear, as best as we have managed to understand the somewhat opaque workings in core development, is a meritocracy - your influence is proportional to the amount of work you do for the project. It's not closed, i.e. you can, if you invest a lot of work into the project, work yourself into a position where you have a lot of influence even starting today from zero. | ||
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They are different areas of expertise, to be a good 3d modeller and graphics expert is quite possibly as demanding as to be a good C++ programmer, Nasal coding isn't per se inferior, ... so why are they not equal? | They are different areas of expertise, to be a good 3d modeller and graphics expert is quite possibly as demanding as to be a good C++ programmer, Nasal coding isn't per se inferior, ... so why are they not equal? | ||
The reason is, simply the dependency structure: Flightgear can run, live and be developed without detailed 3d models, but it can not run without C++ code. If tomorrow all C++ developers quit, that's quite possibly the end of Flightgear, if tomorrow all 3d modellers quit, that's the end of eye candy in Flightgear. | The reason is, simply the dependency structure: Flightgear can run, live and be developed without detailed 3d models, but it can not run without C++ code. If tomorrow all C++ developers quit, that's quite possibly the end of Flightgear, if tomorrow all 3d modellers quit, that's the end of eye candy in Flightgear. | ||
= To be discussed = | = To be discussed = | ||