[Foundation] membership, money, and meritocracy

[Daniel Chote]

Ok, ive finally come to a conlusion.. enough for a post at least *mind 
my bad spelling*.

We need to hit a few topics, so people arnt so frustrated with this 
situation.  Its turning in to a firefight :)

Ok, first things first... We need to get the order of events 
straightened up!

We need to drop the whole "structure like apache" thing... Apache was 
built around a quite complete protocol. Jabber doesnt have that yet, the 
foundation is fueling the development of the protocol. Ideas go to JEP, 
JEP's get implemented, implementations lead to publishing, publishing to 
release.. and so on...  By implying that we want to filter jsf members 
on a monetry/pure open source contribution is something that comes 
across as being quite offensive to me, and i can see why people are 
getting offended. This is due to 2 things.. The costs, and the open 
source thing, not everyone wants to have an open source client. The 
other is the mentioning of money, before any plans for this money have 
been discussed.. surely it would have been wise to not tackle this 
topic, until the plans have been discussed a little more... Now I know 
there has been a funding plan of attack that has been posted already, 
but that was not substancial.

Now, im not saying anyone is wrong, and its definatly not a horrific 
thing to bring this topic up at this time. But, there hasnt really been 
a roadmap discussed with the current jsf members as to what our plan as 
far as development through to marketing goes... Telling people that we 
need money is one thing, telling them that we need it from them, the 
people who contribute a LOT of time in to jabber development, and in a 
way, free advertising of the jabber network.

I dont want to sound like an objector to other people in the jsf, but, 
like a lot of things ive seen happen with jabber over the years.. .We 
dont want a situation where the people at the top, stay at the top, and 
tell the people not so fortunate (but probably more active in 
development) what and how to do things...  In the long run, yes.. I 
agree with PGM, the JSF would be the governing body to the jabber 
community.... BUT, at the moment, Jabber is up in the air, and what is 
there really to govern... And if this goes through, and we get left 
out... Who wants a protocol built on stagnant ideas from people who have 
been in the upper loop from the beginning. Yes, there will be the great 
input from those willing enough to share their source code, but at what 
stage does this process change for the rest of the community, and 
without *grants* when do the open source developers have to pay?..  
Forget not the lowly followers who build the community from pure 
personal interest.

What i'm really getting at, people like myself,  Johannes, Alex and 
Stephen Lee, Sebastiaan, etc etc. People who dont want to give out all 
the secrets behing their work.  When do we get to say *no thats a stupid 
idea, we tried something like that last month, and it didnt work*... The 
unfortunatly successful minority of jabber developers, who want to then 
step up to the jsf and vote... but cant because we didnt pay our *fees*...

Im not saying im against fee's... but, manditory, c'mon, thats what 
sponsers are for.... erk, if im going to pay to subscribe to something.. 
I at least want some titties for my money...

thats my rant, take it as you want, its the last you will hear from me 
on this topic as it stands...

-Dan



Jeffrey Ricker wrote:

> <Vent>
>
> 1. I agree with Johannes in that the mere mention of a fee makes me 
> angry, and I am one of those commercial f--ers that just joined JSF. I 
> will make the point again: Eclipse has the biggest software companies 
> in the world, and when it mentioned a fee it was flatly, vehemently 
> rejected.
>
> 2. If you require fees then you are, by definition, NOT a meritocracy. 
> You are instead an oligarchy, or perhaps someone can find a better 
> word. Where is the merit in a fee? And what good are merits if you 
> haven't the money for the fee?
>
> 3. Exchange of money requires accountability, and accountability 
> requires infrastructure. Where is this infrastructure? Will the money 
> go entirely to fund the accountability infrastructure and leave 
> nothing left  for the original mission. (That is absolute beauty of 
> bureaucray. Say! Maybe that was the word I was looking for.) Peter 
> stated that the objective was:  "Enough money to pursue important 
> opportunities." Here is cracking the lid to Pandora's box:
>
> - What opportunities?
> - How are they important?
> - How are they prioritized, that is, who determines which are more 
> important and how?
> - More important to whom? Who determines who determines priority?
> - How much is enough money?
> - Who will write the check?
> - Who will make sure the money was spent on the right things?
> - What if there is a disagreement on what should be spent and where?
> - How do you assure that the opportunities benefit all the members 
> equally?
> - Who out there is really reading this, anyway?
>
> 4. So what is the objective here?
>    a. Make XMPP and Jabber a ubiquitous and beneficial part of the 
> Internet infrastructure like HTTP/Apache and SMTP/SendMail before it?
>    b. Let some people play "I'm important" with other people's money?
>
> 5. Go back to basics. What is the purpose of JSF? Eric Raymond said 
> that open-source projects get started because so one had an itch to 
> scratch. The project grows when there are enough people with the same 
> itch. Fees and bureaucracies is an excellent way to encourage people 
> to find something else to scratch with.
>
> </Vent>
> -R.
>
> johannes.wagener at gmx.net wrote:
>
>> On 3 Apr 2003 at 15:23, Matt Tucker wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>> Johannes,
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>> Well, you are right :)
>>>> contribution is not for evry one.
>>>>     
>>>
>>> > [snip]
>>> > Whatever our non open source and not very commercial clients are also
>>> > part of the Jabber world and I think we deserve influence on the
>>> > Jabber Protocol and stuff as same as the other two parties.
>>> >
>>> > Paractically it is probably not possibel to distinguish between 
>>> really
>>> > commercials and those hobby "commercial" non open source developers.
>>> > I also don't want newcommers to get excluded just because they don't
>>> > want their app becoming open source.
>>> > [snip]
>>> > Of course I can understand that some of the more active
>>> > contributorsare disapointed that there are so many "ideling"
>>> > ppl around.
>>>
>>> Respectfully, I think the answer in this case is that people in your 
>>> situation are valued members of the larger Jabber community. 
>>> However, they may not make good candidates for members in the JSF.
>>>
>>>   
>>
>>
>> And why not?
>> I personally have
>> chosen jabber BECAUSE it is simply a good forum for us who use the 
>> jabber protocol. We are those that need the jabber protocol. And 
>> don't take me wrong but the JSF is for us, who develop for jabber the 
>> jabberd's or the clients (in any way, commercial , open source or 
>> whatever).
>>
>> And basically: many jabber clients are non open source and non 
>> commercial.
>> In fact the coders DO NOT REALLY CARE about what they are, they 
>> simply use the jabber protocol and should have influence on it of 
>> course. This is the sense: simple logic!
>>
>> I have absolutely NO INTEREST nor do I see any reason for a FEE. The 
>> reason for the JSF is that we ppl that develop for jabber have our 
>> forum where we tacle out new protocols. And sometimes some of us are 
>> interested in promoting Jabber a bit so the play marketing team and 
>> even use some sponsored money to make some kind of advertisement.
>>
>> JSF is nothing else then this forum.
>>
>> And I, as a part of this forum, just want to tell you:
>> I wont accept to have a partly commercialised JSF that holds 
>> commercial big companies or open source only developers blah blah 
>> blah...
>> whatever, I am simply against such an idea that is totally 
>> contraproductive to that what the JSF is.
>>
>> And to say it like this: I want a JSF that everybody can simply join 
>> for free, just when he thinks he has some needs to contribute at the 
>> envolvement of jabber.
>>
>> Do you think Daniel, Alex and me did not contribute to the 
>> envolvement of jabber, tell me a reason why we should get kicked out? 
>> We are here for a very long time.
>>
>> Matt Tucker, who do you think you are? I looked you up in google and 
>> you are a small commercial jabber lib developer or whatever. I don't 
>> really care...
>> Is the reason for this whole thing the strategy to force us non open 
>> source hobby coders out of the JSF to reduce the risk of getting 
>> concurrence in later years?
>>
>> I am REALLY ANGRY about the whole thing and I will not accept this shit.
>>
>> Edrin!
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/members
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>
>
>
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