On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 11:35 PM, katie hargrave <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Felix Stalder's essay embodied for me many of the questions I still have
> about my participation in open source projects (be they OS software or OS
> culture) regarding accessibility, democracy, and participation.  He points
> to the mythology of open source as being accessible to a broad group and
> being democratic in its organization, while also questioning how
> participation in open source culture is impeded upon by the structuring of
> expertise.

I dont know if this is useful but here is a snippet from a
conversation elsewhere about managing
participation, initiative and due process.

I think I finally decided that it helps to be explicit in any project
whether the goal is a product or a process.
And to have one trump the other consistent with that stated intention.

=====

Volunteer organisations (not just floss) can have a tendency to
constitutional monarchy because volunteering is often about who has
the capacity and energy at any given time. This can be good if the
monarch(s) are careful with the informal power they have. It can be a
problem when those who are essentially so valuable that they are above
the law choose to function with that kind of assumption and
effectively make a nonsense of the rules that everyone else has to
play by. This is likely to be confusing for people who are new
participants because it is not clear how to engage. It can be
challenging for an elected committee to be in a good position if the
people who are informal leaders of the community operate at
counterpoint to a committee. The role of any due process or democratic
committee would be difficult because they would be trying to fit
irregular ideas after the fact back into the kind of pattern of
practice that others have to work to.
=====

It is also very tempting to cut through the tape and get soemthing
done if you want to.
So this kind of process for participation and passion for getting
things done are the warp and weft of floss

There are similar kinds of tensions between individual passion or
vision and practice designed for collaboration in art?