Lessons Learned

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 10:20 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On 3/20/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 12:23 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

> > > Is this the "pure anarchy is the only true freedom!" argument?
> >
> > No, this the a "government without supporters will not work" argument.
> >
> > A consequence from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
> > and its reflection on modern democracy
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Contract_%28Rousseau%29
> >
> 
> Ok that is a different argument.. the social contract here is:
> 
> Red Hat Inc is the corporate sponsor and will have to make decisions
> that people will not agree with because of unknown factors.
> 
> You as a private "free" citizen agree that you realize this but this
> does not stop you from: complaining about those decisions, asking for
> those decisions to be explained etc etc. You are also free to take the
> code that Red Hat provided and collect enough other angry citizens to
> start your own city-state that you can rectify the bad decision.
Right.

> Red Hat realizes that if it makes too many bad decisions it will fail.
> If they fail, they die as a corporation. This is the balancing act
> they have to follow.
> 
> Do I think that this is an enlightened government that I would want to
> physically live under... no.
Right, it's a despotic government in Rousseau's sense[1].

It will only work as long as this government finds sufficient supporters
within their "people", who are willing to support them ("opportunists").

If you want to regard Fedora Leadership as "enlightened monarchy", then
the natural consequence would be this monarchy's to demonstrate their
"enlightedness" to find supporters.

>  Do I think I can live with it currently..
> yes.
Well, my perspective is a bit different: I do not consider me to be
living under this government, but consider me to "collaborate"/"make
business" with this "foreign government". Wrt. this I regard my
involvement into FPC not as "governing" but as involvement into finding
"regulations/standards" (a technical, bureaucratic act).

This is not any different from everyday live: You don't have to fully
accept/agree to a "foreign entity" (nation, enterprise, individual).
Where to draw the line with whom to collaborate is subject to individual
considerations.

>  Are there better arrangements.. most likely, but I do not see it
> right now.

One approach would be to clearly separate Fedora from RH. This had been
the case with fedora.us and had been the case when Fedora had an elected
FESCo. Nowadays, doubts are justified.

Ralf

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Contract_%28Rousseau%29