On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Greg Knaddison - GVS <Greg@growingventuresolutions.com> wrote:
I'm mostly just disagreeing so that we can investigate these ideas fully.
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Steven Peck <sepeck@gmail.com> wrote:
A monoculture produces no innovation.
How about "tends to produce less innovation."
Protecting the existing contributed modules which may or may not have active maintainers, which may or may not have maintainers who cooperate and/or may or may not have maintainers that share a vision is not good.
In the specific case of a project that is no longer maintained we can give maintenance to someone new, right? I don't see how that's an argument to create (or allow the creation of) a new module.
And we already do this in the case of modules known to be unmaintained because someone reported it. However the remaining use cases are still valid. While we encourage cooperation, we cannot force it without alienating a lot of contributors. Some contributors do not play nice with others Some contributors do not play nice with certain people. Some contributors have different visions for the end result of their modules Some contributors have been burned by relying on others contributed modules for features/functions so are forced to duplicate with their own work Some contributors merely contribute back with no intention of changing their module but still maintain it.
Forbidding innovation or competition produces a protected class of elite people who were first to arrive but may not actually be doing something now.
Sure, but we've also got a policy that inactive maintainers get replaced. So, I don't think your conclusion is entirely accurate.
I do. New modules may duplicate functionality but in a different way. That different way may not be readily appearent to the few who approve CVS accounts.
As this is not a new debate, I shall introduce a new one. Fire is bad. Support or refute this statement.
It's not new, but it is something where there is some disagreement in the community. I'd like to have a discussion about this to see if we can come to a closer agreement. If you can point to an existing decision on this topic, please do. The closest I can see to a guiding decision is the last bullet on http://drupal.org/principles
We encourage strongly cooperation and collaboration. We do not force it. Forcing it would certainly alienate any number of contributors and add significantly to the administrative burden of a few. http://drupal.org/node/23789 I do not have time to search the dev archives for the previous discussions and decisians but I believe this is a yearly discussion in some form or another. I believe there is also a post on Dries blog regarding the subject.
Thanks for your input.
Greg
Steven Peck