Bug#727708: On diversity

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 05:08:51PM +0100, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-01-17 at 16:01 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > The "universal operating system"
> > phrase is a slogan.
> Sure it is, but that slogan actually stands for some important
> principles in the open source world... like not to "force" stuff upon
> users... and allowing many different things to happily co-exist.
> Open source is also a lot about freedom (not only that of developers but
> also that of users)
>...

This is a common misconception:

There is no such principle, and Open Source does not turn the developers 
who (often in their spare time) work on the software into slaves of 
their users. The exact opposite is true, and the developers who do the 
work have the freedom to force whatever they want on the users of their 
software.

Among the freedoms Open Source gives to all users the relevant one is 
actually the right to fork: If you don't like a policy decision of an 
Open Source project, you can always create a fork that works exactly
the way you envision it.

This is quite fair in giving the power of making decisions not to the 
users who scream loudest, but to the people who actually do the work.

And for Debian the Technical Committee is the instance to make such 
decisions on behalf of the whole project.

> Cheers,
> Chris.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
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       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed