in reply to Re^4: Organizational Culture (Part I): Introduction -- prevarication
in thread Organizational Culture (Part I): Introduction
Off Topic..
all times I ear about our economy model, it comes back to my mind the best description I ever encountered and, no, it comes not from a '800 theory book :)
> I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus
Alternatives? Maybe we are too late, maybe not. Passing years I'm more and more persuaded that the first change must occur in our minds. I hope we will dont need a catastrophic event to realize the situation. The central point, in my opinion, is the the global values scale behind everything: we are stuck to a view where the monetary profit is only and ultimate value for everything. I have a different scale: first of all there is our dear planet made by earth, air and water: without this in more than decent condition there is no chance for human beings to survive. At the second place there is the humankind: we are a lot! Probably too much to not over exploit the planet and probably we need a serious birth control for next centuries. That said all humans have the right to live decently and in freedom, but not the rigth to overhelm the neigbour nor the planet. After these points if there is room for personal profit, we can discuss about it..
..but not too much!
How this can be related to free software communities? It is and a lot. We want to be named as a naif interlude in the software era, finally and forever dominated by companies? Or maybe we will realize that we need a big effort to define a new ethic making our communities more and more stronger? I have already stated my points recently and autogestion is the key word for the solution I see. But a big theoretical and practical effort is needed to make some step forward, from the, sad, point we are.
Being sceptical about Internet Democracy applied to general politic ( we had bad experiences in my country ;) if we are talking about Free Software communities a lot can be done: representativeness can be achieved with easy: a survey about the cpan RT tool would have been a good idea, before announcing the intent to shut it down: maybe you can have more votes based on the total upstream value of your modules on cpan, maybe core module developpers can have +1000 vote, maybe the pumpiking can have 10000 votes.. or what we decided togheter.
That is the point: the little power we have has to be dissected, reasonably removing the possibility to be used to overhelm something or someone. Responsability will be toward the bottom of the community, not toward a boss or an abstract idea. Participation will be asked from a minimal kind of to something more challenging.
about Code of Conduct
> Back to the point of "Codes of Conduct", they are embelishments to the brutality we feel all around us..
Well.. I think CoC come from another mentality, in my opinion typical of the Anglo-Saxon (how do you say nowadays: Western?) colture. For peoples accostumed to Roman Laws (and Bizanthyne ones!) for centuries the Anglo-Saxon approach seems semplicistic, naif and somehow childish. I dont want to offend, I want only highline a different cultural approach.
I remember filling same paper to take a flight passing from Canada: I was very surprised by the question: are you a terrorist? and it made me laugh. The point is: they dont expect someone admitting to be a terrorist but the opportunity to slap your lie in your face during an eventual judgement.
So what is a Code of Conduct? Dont be an asshole.. It sounds not very different from the above terrorist question. But certainly we need a minimal, but shared and community born, framework to rule or circumscribe interactions. For example what communication channels are admittable? We have so much that it becomes a hairy thing to shave, but we have to.
So call it organizational colture or autogestion it is something we need desperately.
L*
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.
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