Re: kudos and observation

[Neil W. Van Dyke]

Thien-Thi Nguyen <address@hidden> writes at 01:41 03-Apr-2002 -0800:
>    Lack of say is a disempowerment of programmers, and, once
>    there is the inevitable disagreement on points that the
>    disempowered programmers care about, this creates morale
>    problems.  All of which seems antithetical to the spirit of
>    free software.
> 
> well, you're sliding from disproportionate to lack but i follow
> you.  what is the ideal proportion?  how do you determine this?

I don't think there is any simple rule, especially for a project like
Guile, which has some clear organizational hierarchy but a strong
volunteer flavor overall.

When making decisions in a group like this, I think people in general
tend to negotiate the proportions subtly for each situation.  More a
collective art than a science.

There's few enough core Guile developers that there should be little
need for edicts.  The team is small enough for everyone to be heard in a
discussion.  Also, in those cases in which consensus on an issue is not
quickly reached based on the merits of the issue alone, everyone on the
team recognizes that compromise is sometimes necessary to move forward
and to maintain a cooperative tone.

(Just an opinion.  I really hesitated to say anything at all, since I'm
not a core Guile developer myself.  But I hated to see unresolved team
dynamics glitches that probably require only the slightest prodding to
fix.)

-- 
                                                        Neil W. Van Dyke
                                             http://www.neilvandyke.org/