"… the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches … out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles."
This no longer surprises me. Not applicable to EMS stuff though, so lets fix it! :
"… the
FreeEMS community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches … out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles." (Or massive effort on the part of a few coherent individuals!)
"Eric Raymond decided what piece of software he would use as a test for open source programming. He decided what features fetchmail would have, and what features it would not. He generalized and simplified its design. In other words, he defined the software project. Mr. Raymond guided the project over a considerable period of time, remaining a constant as volunteers came and went. In other words, he marshaled resources. He surely was careful about source code control and build procedures (or his releases would have been poor quality) so he monitored the project. And, most significantly, Raymond heaped praise on volunteers who helped him, which motivated those people to help some more."
That sounds quite familiar too lol. So does this :
"Torvalds was in charge of Linux. He made all major decisions, assigned subsystems to a few trusted people (to organize the work), resolved conflicts between competing ideas, and inspired his followers."
"The fetchmail and Linux projects
were built by single, strong architects with lots of help -- just like the great cathedrals of Europe.
Beautiful cathedrals were guided by one person, over many years, with inexpensive help from legions of workers. Just like open source software is. And, just as with open source software, the builders of the cathedrals were motivated by religious fervor and a divine goal. Back then, it was celebrating the glory of God, now it is toppling Bill Gates. (Some people think these goals are not so different.)"
LOL @ Bill Gates toppling!
Just read the whole thing here :
http://www.chc-3.com/pub/manage_themselves.htm
Fred.