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Study Reports On Debian Governance, Social Organization
andremachado writes "Two academic management researchers, Siobhán O'Mahony and Fabrizion Ferraro, performed a detailed scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization from the management perspective. How did a big non-commercial non-paying community evolve to produce some of the most respectable Operating Systems and applications packages available? Organizations without a consensual basis of authority lack an important condition necessary for their survival. Those with directly democratic forms of participation do not tend to scale well and are noted for their difficulty managing complexity and decision-making — all of which can hasten their demise. The Debian Project community designed and evolved a solid governance system since 1993 able to establish shared conceptions of formal authority, leadership, and meritocracy, limited by defined democratic adaptive mechanisms."
it was an anarcho-syndicalist commune, where they take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Wish it hadn't been /.'d
Look, I'm not saying that debian isn't awesome, but who payed them to say that?
Ubuntu is 10x better than Debian
I for one welcome our debian ... nevermind.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Show me the PostgreSQL project's org chart. Show me the evidence that the project is not kicking ass.
On the one hand, it's nice to see some analysis on more loosely organized software projects. It's definitely not something that the average corporate sponsored University department would do.
It's also funny to see how short most enthusiasts memories are. Pre-Sarge, Debian was being criticized for everything under the sun.
As an off-topic FYI, Debian Testing is in fine shape for a KDE desktop. I'm running two simple servers on testing and there are no show-stopper bugs. Get your Beta installation disk today! http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Postgresql does indeed kick ass.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The site has been slashdotted apparently but no fear, it does not contain anything useful information about the research anyways. You could download the original draft submitted to the journal at http://www.business.ualberta.ca/tcc/documents/TII_3_OMahoney_Ferraro_final.pdf
[quote]
The following is the quote from google's cached version:
Scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization
André Felipe Machado
TerÃa-Feira, 27 de Novembro de 2007
Two academic management researchers performed a detailed scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization from the management perspective.
The study analyzed 13 years of Debian Project history, interviewed some Project participants and previous Leaders, and carefully observed patterns.
The open nature of history, registered at discussion lists archives and irc logs, meetings reports, helped a lot during the data collection phase.
The study is VERY interesting as scientific analyzed HOW an open source project survived, evolved and flourished during 13 years, overcoming many troubles only challenged by long term BIG communities, reaching a solid institutional foundations to resolve disputes.
The previously releasead version of the text can be found here.
The latest revised version, published at the Academy of Management Journal, Oct 2007, Vol. 50 Issue 5, p1079-1106, 28p; (AN 27169153), is copyrighted and can not be published here.
The authors are SiobhÃn O'Mahony , Assistant Professor at the University of California's Graduate School of Management, and Fabrizio Ferraro , General Management Professor at IESE
Versão para impressão
Baixar PDF Baixar a versão PDF desta pÃgina
[/quote]
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:xNSVXdrRQ_IJ:www.techforce.com.br/index.php/news/linux_blog/scientific_study_about_debian_governance_and_organization+http://www.techforce.com.br/index.php/news/linux_blog/scientific_study_about_debian_governance_and_organization&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=mozilla
"Scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization
André Felipe Machado
Terça-Feira, 27 de Novembro de 2007
Two academic management researchers performed a detailed scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization from the management perspective.
The study analyzed 13 years of Debian Project history, interviewed some Project participants and previous Leaders, and carefully observed patterns.
The open nature of history, registered at discussion lists archives and irc logs, meetings reports, helped a lot during the data collection phase.
The study is VERY interesting as scientific analyzed HOW an open source project survived, evolved and flourished during 13 years, overcoming many troubles only challenged by long term BIG communities, reaching a solid institutional foundations to resolve disputes.
The previously releasead version of the text can be found here.
The latest revised version, published at the Academy of Management Journal, Oct 2007, Vol. 50 Issue 5, p1079-1106, 28p; (AN 27169153), is copyrighted and can not be published here.
The authors are Siobhán O'Mahony , Assistant Professor at the University of California's Graduate School of Management, and Fabrizio Ferraro , General Management Professor at IESE..."
Bottom's PDF link in HTML: http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:R1NB3mNYlusJ:www.techforce.com.br/index.php/news/content/pdf/12895+http://www.techforce.com.br/index.php/news/content/pdf/12795&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=mozilla
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Debian doesn't seem to mind Ubuntu, for the most part, except when Ubuntu users come to Debian forums asking for help.
/bin/sh linked to /bin/bash, although they did have a rule that any script requiring /bin/sh should only use POSIX syntax, and not bash-isms. Sometime in 2006, I think, Ubuntu switched /bin/sh to /bin/dash. Dash is much faster than Bash -- so much so that this switch is the main reason that version of Ubuntu booted so much faster than previous versions (it was also when Upstart was first integrated, though Upstart is barely used)...
/bin/sh linked to dash -- some of Amazon's EC2 tools, designed to work on Fedora, need to be patched before they can work on Ubuntu, for that very reason.
But a simple example: Debian, for the longest time, had
And since then, certainly, fixes to various packages' scripts which claim #!/bin/sh, but really want bash, have been sent back to Debian. (Either POSIX-ify them, or make them explicitly ask for bash.) But as far as I know, no major distributions outside Ubuntu actually have
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Win!
I have always been disappointed in ubuntu. Way too much crap thrown together that I don't need and I hate release schedules. I have been running debian-testing for a couple of years. It is always up to date, no need to do wacky reinstalls every 6 months. I always laugh at the ubuntu fan boys ranting about how they just upgraded to the latest release and about how they are up to date now. Even the latest release is several months behind debian-testing and I didn't have to anything except "aptitude upgrade" to get it. BAM!
http://christi.ath.cx/ubuntu_vs_debian.html
Link to pdf of article:
http://cv.aenertia.net-a.googlepages.com/debian_social_organisation_partial_f.pdf
Copyright disclaimer: I have converted and modified the original published article, to comply with my countries educational fair use policy of not redistributing entire text of copyrighted articles.
Enjoy.
So, Tavistock, we just registered a spike in the use of the word "Governance" this week.
What gives? Getting the serfs used to it are we?