[GRASS-user] Off/On-Topic

[Benjamin Ducke]

Hi Nikos,

these are important issues that are being evaluated and re-evaluated
all the time. If your university library has it, then this publication might 
be an interesting read for you:

Joseph Feller (ed): Perspectives on Open Source Software (MIT Press 
2005).

It looks into pretty much all the questions you have posted here.

Best,

Ben

Nikos Alexandris wrote:
> 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.)
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I wish you all a Healthy new year.
> 
> Thank you for this wonderful living community,
> Nikos
> ---
> [1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/2007-October/041690.html
> [2]
> http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/grass-user/2007-November/041701.html
> 
> _______________________________________________
> grass-user mailing list
> grass-user at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user
> 
> 


-- 
Benjamin Ducke
Senior Applications Support and Development Officer

Oxford Archaeological Unit Limited
Janus House
Osney Mead
OX2 0ES
Oxford, U.K.

Tel.: ++44 (0)1865 263 800
benjamin.ducke at oxfordarch.co.uk




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