[Members] Voting criteria

[Richard Dobson]

> > Favouring any one project at the expense of others would be a very very 
> > bad
> > idea IMO as it would disenfranchise anyone from creating anything new 
> > and
> > also other developers continuing their existing competing projects, 
> > doing
> > something like this would be very damaging to the JSF IMO, keeping the 
> > JSF a
> > more impartial organisation is definately they way to go.

> While I understand what you are basing your opinions on, I have to
> strongly disagree here.  There is no disenfranchising here.
> Competition would /encourage/ new developers, new projects and
> actually light some fires under people's feet to make their good
> product great.

I think either you have misunderstood me or you simply havent thought the 
implications through properly, having "Official JSF Software" where it would 
presumably be restricted to only one of each type of application (i.e. only 
one windows client) might encourage some new developers to contribute to 
that project, but it is very unlikely to foster development on any new 
projects more than at the moment, it is far more likely to stifle any new 
development, it certainly will not foster it, the only way to foster it is 
with a certification program where those developers have a target to work to 
and an award at the end of it. Yes it will light fires under peoples feet, 
but that is more likely to make them give up rather than make their product 
great as outsiders will from then on likely see their product as second rate 
and less good than the official software, and businesses are far less likely 
to trust it etc, they might keep their existing users yes, but having an 
official JSF project will make it extraordinarily hard for them to compete 
and make it not so fun anymore to continue development, at which stage you 
just give up, whats the point in making it if you dont enjoy it.

> Life is not fair and all things are not equal.  Some software (and I
> daresay some developers) are better than others.  I'm not even saying
> "may the best one win" (which could be interesting), but rather, "all
> who meet this baseline gets this badge of honor".  It's encouraging
> and a goal to strive for!

Sure of course, its fine if anyone has the opportunity to get the badge 
thats fine with me, but in the past the "Official JSF Software" idea has 
always been pushed as only one will ever win, which is where the damage to 
the community comes in.

> But--I've always been supportive of the certification idea as well.
> But I would want multiple levels.  We have already established
> several--XMPP, Basic IM, Intermediate IM, etc.  The only thing lacking
> is to formalize a process to get on one of these three lists (or
> others).

Yea thats good, IMO certifications is the only really fair way to assign 
honours to clients, they have something specific to work for and everyone is 
held to the same set of rules to get the honour.

> And once you have that going, why not measure the popularity of
> projects (like Sourceforge)?  That would certainly favor the good
> projects over the bad, and that is a good thing.

Yup sure, not entirely sure how you would measure the popularity other than 
download counts or surveys tho.

Richard