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Martin Schulze Steps Down As SPI Vice President
Tina Gasperson reports on NewsForge that Martin Schulze, Vice President of Software in the Public Interest, is resigning his position there to protest the lack of time he says fellow SPI higher-ups are devoting to the organization. Since SPI serves as a coordinating body for several large-scale Free software projects (like GNOME and OpenOffice.org), discord there should concern a lot of people. Update: 11/26 03:14 GMT by T : That should read "OpenSource.org," not "OpenOffice.org." Sorry.
You might not agree with him, but that took some guts to do. I wish more people were so dedicated to their beliefs.
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Bite Me Fanboy!!
I swear the open source community is often it's own worse enemy. Since (almost) noone is making money doing it, the primary form of compensation is ego gratification. If someone doesn't get their way, they throw a temper tantrum and go off on their own. The end result is forked code trees, huge amounts of duplicated effort, and projects that never go anywhere.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
when good things run into problems because of personal issues.
And while all parties involved will (of course) deny that the cause is personal issues, it seems rather obvious.
I mean, the VP resigns because he feels the other high ranking officials aren't "dedicated" enough? In whose opinion? And why not appoint other functionaries to do the jobs that need doing?
No, resignations like this (especially the sort where you have "either they all resign or I do...") are almost always personally motivated out of a feeling to "show someone" how much in the wrong they are.
And it almost never helps. This is a lose-lose situation. Imagine if the rest of the board had resigned... credibility would fly out the window.
Like I said, it is always saddening when a good organization has problems because of people not getting along. While I don't know a lot about SPI, it seems they do, uhm open source stuff (:P their website is kinda hard to understand in that it is very very generalized. Slashdot could have the same mission statement as them and not change significantly).
Martin, aka "Joey", is one of the many unsung free software heroes of SPI/Debian. Joey deals with everything from helping newbies to organizational tasks to technical issues in a way that few can do -- either because of a lack of time, patience, and/or skills.
This is a case of someone dedicating huge amounts of time in the best traditions of free software -- something that few can do, either because of finances, other life pressures, or simply human limitations. This makes Joey an overachiever in the best sense of the word.
The poster was right: this resignation spells trouble for free software. It's a sign of distress and it should cause some thought to be given to the issues of time/work and free software: Is there a better way we can encourage people to commit their time to free software projects? Is there a way we can give these hard working people who do all of the non-glamorous -- but necessary -- work behind the scenes the recogition they deserve?
That's a pretty contemptible position to hold. As it seems you have no idea of Jimmy Kaplowitz's capabilities or experience, you're judging him based solely on age - which is likely to be irrelevant. I hope the SPI does take him seriously. Surely the more legitimate position would be not to question the SPI because a 19 year old threw his hat into the ring, but to firstly determine his suitability based on relevant criteria, and secondly to question why this doesn't happen more often with more mainstream boards (and not just non-profits, either). I've met some pretty impressive 19 year olds before; there are no doubt many, many more that I haven't met.
Alister
Oh well, if a 19-year old (http://www.marcelothewonderpenguin.com/) currently has the final say in what goes in _your_ kernel (that is, if you're running Linux) then why not trust Jimmy.
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There's no reason why someone who's been on this earth a little longer automatically deserves more respect. Experience can often help, but is surely no guarantee.
Judge the guy on what he does, not on his age, skin tone, sex,
Read your entire post again, and compare your and his comments. Who deserves the most respect?
Even worse, the latest news is from 1999...
Concrete proof noone's putting in the efforts...
Generally speaking, one might imply a lesser degree of LIFE experience based on age (almost by definition), but this may be totally irrelevant to his other qualifications.
Some people develop more quickly than others... how old was Alexander the Great when he conquered the known world? 20?
Some of us were unvarnished idiots when we were 19 years old (speaking only for my own idiocy of course... some people would say nothing's changed... oh well), but this guy might be the next Einstein or Fermi.
Anyway, getting to the point, you really should judge this individual based on his qualifications, and nothing else. Anything less, and you run the risk of being labeled, perhaps rightly, as some kind of age/sex/race/religion/etc bigot (as some posters have already alleged). Objective criteria should be your only yardstick.
I don't know the individual in question, so I cannot vouch for his savant-like programming 5k1LLZ (or lack thereof).
Give the guy a chance. Really. What could it hurt?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.