Open Source Is Not a Democracy

itwbennett writes "A recent kerfuffle within the Ubuntu community serves as a reminder of an inconvenient truth: open source is not a democracy, writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'The discussion started innocuously enough, within Bug #532633 in light-themes (Ubuntu) on Launchpad, where the order of the window controls within the Light theme were requested to be re-arranged to be on the upper right side of any given window. Light, it seemed, now placed the buttons on the left side, similar to the Mac OS X interface.' The discussion turned into an argument and culminated in this exchange in which Mark Shuttleworth lays down the law: '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... No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on design decisions.'"

Comments

Re:-1 Troll

[Concern]

I looked it up.

Democracy is not defined in a standard way. The things common to all definitions are equality and freedom.

Anarchy is undemocratic, because for practical purposes, in an anarchic state, the strong rule the weak. For example, if I don't like Shuttleworth's tree, in anarchy, I can shoot him, unless he shoots me first.

Meanwhile, in the modern world, an open source project is utterly democratic, because everyone gets one voice, and no one can suppress it.