[GRASS-user] Off/On-Topic

[Nikos Alexandris]

Dear all,

it's a full month that I stopped following actively the grass-user (and
other foss4g) list(s). I am back and now, hopefully, more dynamic, more
and more involved as an end-user and perhaps with limited advanced
contributions.

I started following the list(s) in October 2007 (with a question about
"fonts" [1] and) with "MORE questions" (November 2007 [2]) and the
statement "I know that I only have questions (and a lot). Hope this will
change in time...".

I still have questions :-). And I'll always do. Although I feel that I
didn't do enough, I tried to put a small piece of grain in this piece of
Art named GRASS-GIS and maybe less in other foss4g projects.

I feel happy and satisfied that this period (October 2007 - November
2008) was so fruitful from the perspective of gaining knowledge and
experiences in the field of GIS as never before in my life.

It was also my intention to kind of celebrate it somehow last December
(2008)... (oh, I always have my crazy ideas:-). But I had to drop them
and concentrate to the political situation back home in Greece.

We only then wake-up when we see (literally and metaphorically) fires
burning our home. We are blinded and cannot see what is happening the
last 4 decades and more which lead in today's fires. Not only in my
country but on a global scale.

The values of transparency and meritocracy that are trying to be
realised in the foss4g projects kept me working with foss4g all this
time and I cannot think alternatives for the moment. Those two important
values are absent today, in many dimensions of the wide real world.

I even started to parallelize, keeping of course in mind the enormous
difference between a socio-political and a foss(4g) organisation scheme,
the open-source concept by putting basic *political* questions with
respect to Democracy (here I mean real/ideal Democracy and not today's
pseudo-Democracy).

(I understand politics as the right to express freely my thoughts and
more important to be free to doubt directly and the established system
at any time.)

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Questions like:

What makes a person a member in the GRASS-GIS community for example? The
subscription in a mailing-list? Programing and/or bug-hunting? Donating
some amount of money in the project?

Are the foss4g projects really autonomous? Are they really
self-determined?

Can really a member of a foss4g community doubt anytime any established
"rule"? Can he speak-out anything he considers to be the right way to
go?

Is there room to improve the fundamental scheme of interaction between
the members of a foss4g community?

Does really *anybody*, equipped with the basics (a pc, internet access)
have real access to the thesaurus of knowledge accumulated through the
development and use of foss4g?

What are the effects and the benefits on society?

How does GRASS-GIS survive? Who cares about it's financial sources,
planning?

etc.

What's the situation in the real world?
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I wish you all a Healthy new year.

Thank you for this wonderful living community,
Nikos
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[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/2007-October/041690.html
[2]
http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/2007-November/041701.html