Comment 232 for bug 532633

OK. Fair warning, this is long as hell, but there were some ideological differences that I felt needed to be addressed. This is a reply to Mark which is probably too way long to justify his reading it, but I'm posting it anyway.

>We all make Ubuntu, but we do not all make all of it. In other words, we delegate well. We have a kernel team, and they make kernel decisions.

Seems reasonable enough, assuming they are reasonably open-minded individuals, who take the ideas of others in to consideration, particularly their users.

>You don't get to make kernel decisions unless you're in that kernel team.

If by "that kernel team," you mean, everyone who has ever filed a bug report or mentioned an oops, or tested SOMETHING or any of the various other cooperative activities between users and developers that have given us the kernel we have today over the last 18 years or so, I might even agree with you here...

>You can file bugs and comment, and engage, but you don't get to second-guess their decisions.

Now that is where, IMO, you are completely wrong. NO ONE is above being second-guessed. Not a president, not a king, not Linus Almighty, nor God himself. (Who, incidentally, I don't believe exists, and if he did, should be overthrown.)

I'm not going to call you a dictator because that is extreme, and a word obviously widely-viewed as being a personal attack. I will say, it seems to me your thought process is indicative of an authoritarian mentality.

Why should it not be? You're a CEO... That is the job. I personally don't believe in the authority principal... This does not mean I reject all authority. The Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin put it well. It is long, but hopefully, enlightening. I've offered a brief summary in my own words that follows this, feel free to skip ahead...

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others."

To summarize: I will defer to the authority of experts, but voluntarily, and not by force.

I admit, that sometimes the authority of expertise is a legitimate authority. This is why Linus writes my kernels rather than Bob down the street... or why if I get a tumor the size of grapefruit growing out of my head, I will see a neurologist...rather than Bob down the street.

What sticks in my craw, is what exactly defines who is an expert on an aesthetic issue like button placement? Is this a realm where a kernel hacker has much more authority than Joe User and their Ma and Pa?

Considering your argument was essentially an appeal to authority on the basis of expertise, I think this is a valid question.

>We have a security team. They get to make
>decisions about security. You don't get to see a lot of what they
>see unless you're on that team. We have processes to help make
>sure we're doing a good job of delegation, but being an open
>community is not the same as saying everybody has a say in
>everything.

It is actually. It doesn't mean you have to listen of course, but everyone DOES get a say. I'd imagine you are realizing this now, if you haven't before.

>This is a difference between Ubuntu and several other community
>distributions. It may feel less democratic, but it's more
>meritocratic, and most importantly it means (a) we should have
>the best people making any given decision, and (b) it's worth
>investing your time to become the best person to make certain
>decisions, because you should have that competence recognised
>and rewarded with the freedom to make hard decisions and not
>get second-guessed all the time.

I think the idea that democracy and meritocracy are mutually exclusive to any degree is an incorrect one... If anything, they are mutually beneficial.

If they weren't, you wouldn't be using Debian as a base, or the Linux kernel as a core.

Again this goes to my critique of the authority principal, that somewhere, some guy, some team, knows what is best, and everyone else needs to follow.

This idea is demonstrably false by the fact that we have a thriving open movement to begin with. Where decisions have been made cooperatively, rather than handed down from above.

If the "best" way was subservients reporting to bosses who call the shots, Linux would be a complete failure, and it isn't.

It is the people who decide the merit. You've said as much in some of your posts in this thread. (Something along the lines of, 'people will vote with their feet,' I'm admittedly paraphrasing.)

>It's fair comment that this was a big change, and landed without
>warning. There aren't any good reasons for that, but it's also
>true that no amount of warning would produce consensus about a
>decision like this.

Maybe the functionality introduced in the top-right corner will amaze and astound us all... There were a lot of doubters during KDE's overhaul w/ version 4. I personally saw limitations, but also merits. It has been my desktop of choice for some time now... since 4.1 or 4.2.

>No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome.
>But we are not voting on design decisions.

I'm actually not a democrat. Or more accurately not JUST a democrat. I'm an Anarchist, which means I'm well aware of the shortcomings of democracy, but also well aware that it is usually a better alternative to hierarchy. It is the spirit of cooperation and solidarity in democracy that separates it from the archaic forms of oppression of our past, such as monarchy, oligarchy, or the various forms of totalitarianism, left or right.

As I've alluded to earlier, I actually run Kubuntu, rather than Ubuntu. So, at least currently, I'm not affected by this dilemma. I will say, having moved from Debian, there are things about *ubuntu that I like very much:

I like recent packages, even if I have to run development versions to get them.

I like a fast boot experience.

I like being reasonably confident, that if I hear about some cool new program, I can do a quick search in synaptic, and install it most of the time.

In the event that I cannot, I like that many software developers make *ubuntu packages available as standard operating procedure.

There are things I do not like about *ubuntu:

I don't particularly like having to run a complete development desktop just to get theora 1.1, or other recent applications, though I can understand to some degree, the reasoning behind it.

I am not particularly thrilled that Ubuntu is infected with mono. Admittedly I'm going by what I hear, as I've not run gnome in some time.

Also, I'd like to defend fewt. Tabloids make stuff up. He quoted you exactly.

Out of context? This entire thread is the context.

All he did was concentrate the authoritarian mentality I referred to earlier... and yeah... it sounds bad. Because it IS bad.

To be perfectly honest, I don;t really care where the buttons are... I'd prefer where I'm used to, but I can adjust. What bothers me, is the mentality behind the decision making process.

As I said, this is long as hell. I don't expect a response. But maybe think about it? If you think I have 10% of a good point, maybe all this writing will have been worth it.

-Andy
AnarchismToday.org

MCP, programmer, web-designer, philosopher, and about a million other things.