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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 17:11, 8 February 2012
, 8 February 2012→FlightGear is a meritocracy
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It's not particularly fair that this translates into the existing project structure, and in fact if you go through my posts here and on the devel list, you'll see that I continue to make the same point. As I said, can't all be fixed in a day... I don't have a particularly large influence either, all I can do is talk to people and ask for patience. You can read up what I wrote in the case of the Bo-105... Good work tends to be recognized eventually - be it modelling or coding. But there's no guarantee, sometimes you have to accept being frustrated, get up and try again. Or you walk because things are not perfect as they are, which is a pity. | It's not particularly fair that this translates into the existing project structure, and in fact if you go through my posts here and on the devel list, you'll see that I continue to make the same point. As I said, can't all be fixed in a day... I don't have a particularly large influence either, all I can do is talk to people and ask for patience. You can read up what I wrote in the case of the Bo-105... Good work tends to be recognized eventually - be it modelling or coding. But there's no guarantee, sometimes you have to accept being frustrated, get up and try again. Or you walk because things are not perfect as they are, which is a pity. | ||
Another thing I don't like is that I feel that the power which comes with having a lot of merits for the projects gets sometimes abused by people who behave in a way that would never be accepted from newcomers. | |||
And yet - it's a fine line between idealism and realism here - so suppose for a moment I had the power to do as I want with the project - what would I do? I feel that all users and contributors should be treated with some basic level of politeness. Assume someone violates that rule, but happens to be a core contributor. Idealism tells me that I need to enforce the rule, because everyone is equal in value as human being and deserves to be treated with repsect - so quite likely the developer feels pissed off and leaves, creating a huge gap in the project (and, no kidding, there are people who are really important...) - in the end, no one benefits if the project collapses. So realism tells me to let things pass - it's better to mistreat one user than to kill the project and to make all users unhappy in the process. | |||
I don't think there's a simple answer to such problems - philosophy has been struggling with them for thousands of years, there hasn't so far emerged a clear preference between an ethics of means and an ethics of ends. | |||
So, perhaps a few folks can step back and see the bigger picture - and maybe share a vision: How would it be if contributing to Flightgear were as easy as contributing to Wikipedia - just what would, e.g. our scenery look like? | |||
And just how can we get there? | |||
= To be discussed = | = To be discussed = | ||