An interesting and relevant essay on this is A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy (which I saw thanks to dws).
That said, Jarkko maintains CPAN. He lead the 5.8.0 release of Perl. It is clear that he is a member of the "core group" involved with Perl and general Perl infrastructure. It is true that if he (and other members of the core group) took Perl in directions that the users don't want to go, users would go elsewhere. But it is equally true that until users get upset enough about affairs to either join the core group, or to fork Perl, the core group fundamentally does what it thinks is right and everyone else can argue about that as long as they want to. Conversely if a group of users does get upset enough to take decisive action and succeeds, then they will wind up re-creating the same basic core/general division all over again because it is a natural dynamic for human groups as they scale.
So, given this reality, what should we conclude? Well first of all, any conversation here does not mean much unless Jarkko hears about it somehow. Second, it is quite possible that there already is a policy about this kind of thing that Jarkko already works by. Third, the single most effective feedback is direct feedback to Jarkko or (if he functions that way - and if a lot of issues do come up he hopefully does) to the relevant list of people whose discussions he pays attention to. Which probably isn't PerlMonks.
Finally, why would it be good for Jarkko (I don't meant to pick on him, what I am saying applies to anyone with a position of influence in an online community) to decide things in an open manner? Here are some of the top reasons that I see:
- Anything he decides gets sanity checked. A lot of obvious problems are caught immediately.
- The open forum provides many people who might otherwise be motivated to cause problems an opportunity to participate instead.
- Other list members, and archived discussions from the list take the load of responding to people about policy decisions from Jarkko's shoulders.
- The forum provides a way for good possible maintainers to identify themselves to Jarkko for when he wants to pass the baton on.
You will note that conspicuous by its absence is any notion of making the process more democratic. Well-run open source projects are meritocracies, not democracies. Wanting a say doesn't give you one. Decisions are made in the end by convincing the right key people, not by voting. | [reply] |
So, given this reality, what should we conclude? Well first of all, any conversation here does not mean much unless Jarkko hears about it somehow.
How does that possible follow from your previous statements? A conversation anywhere means everything, whether or not Jarkko hears it. I could discuss CPAN's direction right here with you, we could decide to provide an alternative and tomorrow there would be one. Where does Jarkko come into the picture? CPAN could be completely replaced without Jarkko hearing about it, so why is such a conversation meaningless until we notify Jarkko?
I should note that I don't program (much) in Perl anymore, haven't seen anything wrong with how CPAN has been run, and have a lot of respect for Jarkko, so I'm not advocating any change whatsoever. I am, however, a little confused as to how you reached the above conclusion.
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