[OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source Lurkers

[Dave Patton]

On 2009/08/21 11:55 AM, Landon Blake wrote:
> I would like to get some comments on a phenomenon I have discovered
> among the OpenJUMP community. I know for sure of one (1) company that
> maintains a separate fork of OpenJUMP, but which monitors our mailing
> list and likely grabs patches form our source code repository. They
> never participate in the forums or make known their use of OpenJUMP in
> any other public manner.

> I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this company wouldn't take
> a more active role in supporting the OpenJUMP community.

Some companies, governments, and institutions have policies
in place that prohibit or limit the ability of employees to
'participate' on forums or mailing lists. "Lurking" by reading
blogs, list archives, forum postings, etc. may be allowed, but
employees may not be permitted, during 'work hours' to participate.
For some people, if it's 'about the job' they won't then use
their own off-work time to participate, and even for those that
do, they may be prohibited from making any mention that they
work for "company X", so you may have participation from one
or more people from "company X", but not know it.

-- 
Dave Patton
CIS Canadian Information Systems
Victoria, B.C.

Degree Confluence Project:
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