[FM Discuss] scribn the bazaar

[Janet Swisher]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 9:41 AM, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> hey
>
> On Wed, 2009-11-11 at 10:05 -0500, Andy Oram wrote:

>>
>> 1. Here's a respected free-software developer who believes in
>>    restricting access to the source respository until the contributor
>>    is trained enough (I found this through radar.oreilly.com):
>>
>>       http://jacobian.org/writing/commit-bits/
>>
>>    Seems to go against our "come one, come all" philosophy, but maybe
>>    we do the same thing by dividing the WRITE page from the READ.
>>
>
> its funny you should bring this up. I just had a very interesting
> experience related to this. I facilitated a great sprint recently and we
> made a nice book. However afterwards the original contributors did not
> want (at all) to have the content available for anyone to be able to
> edit unless it was stored in a repository that would enable incremental
> merges and they would prefer to know the contributors. In essence they
> are pretty strong gatekeepers to the content. They are also very
> hesitant in sharing crediting for contributions. I was actually quite
> shocked so I spoke with Aco and Biella Coleman about it to get a clear
> perspective on it.
>
> As I see it now, there are some open source developers out there that
> want to put the same locks in place on content as they do for code. In
> the open source world (please correct me anyone if i get this wrong)
> repositories can be cloned but merging into the main code base requires
> validation. To be validated you must first gain trust (social and
> technical), and then be able to manage the technical processes.

This is important for code, because the code that is committed has to
work, and be as bug-free as possible, and have no malicious bits. But
for the type of content that is on FM, most faults are patent, not
latent. The exception might be technically arcane details, where no
one but experts would realize if it's incorrect.

> My experience recently has been that bringing some open source
> developers into the free content world can be a little tricky.

It's important to recognize that the GPL obligates receivers to share
changes to code, but it doesn't obligate "publishers" to accept those
changes into the main code base. More lax licenses don't even put an
obligation on the receiver. So the whole social phenomenon of
community contribution is enabled by free licenses, but not required
by them. While the most successful FLOSS projects encourage community
contribution, it's still quite possible for an open source programmer
to hold a proprietary attitude about their "free" code.

FM is closer to the Wikipedia model, and even Wikipedia has backed off
lately from a completely open model, and has moderation in front of
publication, like FM. Also, consider the Creative Commons notion of
free content. If I publish a photo under a CC license, and you modify
it, neither of us would expect me to change my photo to include your
change. The two works remain as separate works. If we agree ahead of
time to collaborate, we might freely change each others' work. But
throwing open the door to let anybody change the work is really quite
radical.

--Janet