13 May 2008 (updated 14 May 2008 at 20:16 UTC)
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A new world for open source is blooming!
Almost everyone is unaware but the seeds of change have been
planted! To a better open source community we are going to!
Open Source is a lot of times regarded as an example of
Meritocracy in action, but if you read
Amartya
Sen's article
about Meritocracy, you will recognize that most of Open
Source projects fit more in his description of a 'static'
meritocracy than a 'dynamic' one (my words to resume his
thoughts), and Sen shows how what should be regarded as a
real meritocracy is the dynamic qualities.
To our rescue comes the knight in his shinning armor, not
other than the famous Linus Torvalds! I guess most readers
think i am crazy by now, but keep up and maybe it will make
sense.
DVCS have been around longer than git but not only by
creating a functional open source DVCS, but by
evangelizing
the benefits of a distributed system he has planted the
seeds
that will change the future (interestingly for all the
democracy and meritocracy fanatics, this necessity came from
a "dictatorship").
And
GitHub is sign of
the changes to come, once oss developers start to rethink
forking not as deviating from the community but as a common
fact of producing software, the whole community structure
will change!
No longer the "core group" will have the overwhelming power,
nor will it matter much, probably such a notion will end up
existing mostly. We will have the real possibility for the
community to choose what to follow from whom, github is a
start in that direction.
I am waiting anxiously for the future, a dynamicly
meritocratic one for OSS.