Be Open

by Peter Saint-Andre

2006-09-26

Linux.com talked with Linus Torvalds about GPLv3, resulting in the following reflections:

At any rate, Torvalds says that he would probably decline to participate because of his dislike of committees. "I don't think committees ever make any sense at all, and I hate meetings. I have a belief that committees tend to get formed when you want to avoid responsibility, and particularly when you know what you want to get and you want to be able to say it was 'consensus.' I work over email, and I do so for a reason."

Moreover, Torvalds suggests that the GPLv3 committees "were actually set up to be more insidious than they sometimes are." He suggests that the committees are largely window dressing, organized so that "The FSF could claim it was all done in the open. The process wasn't open at all. The committees were not allowed to talk about the drafts before they were released, and none of the notes or discussions were ever released afterwards. If you want to have an open process, you put the cards on the table, and you allow open and free discussion in public.

Emphasis in original: open and free discussion in public. That's how we try to do things in the Jabber world, too. Why do so many projects and standards development organizations find openness so hard?


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