[Incubator] Rasdaman as a 'Benevolent dictatorship' Project: was [rasdaman-dev] patch quality

[Daniel Morissette]

On 13-08-01 10:17 AM, Andrea Aime wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 4:10 PM, Even Rouault
> <even.rouault at mines-paris.org <mailto:even.rouault at mines-paris.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I couldn't resist to interfere into this topic. To my opinion, most
>     OSGeo
>     projects current operate under the "Benevolent Dictatorship" model,
>     except that
>     they call it, in a more political correct fashion, a "Project
>     Steering/Management Committee" and it is made of several
>     individuals, with equal
>     rights and known procedures. And, in case of hard disputes, there is an
>     individual who is more equal to others, and he's called the
>     dictator... ahem no,
>     the "Chair"...
>
>
> Except that a chair can be overruled by the rest of the PSC, a
> benevolent dictator
> has full powers if he wants to exercise them instead (even if normally
> he would graciously
> listen to the rest of the community).
>
> For example, in the GeoServer PSC the chair (Chris Holmes) is just a tie
> breaker, the position
> has otherwise no special powers. We do however have a fallback, if the
> PSC stops to function
> the control of the project goes back to OpenPlans.
>

I agree with Andrea here. A steering committee with a veto mechanism is 
very different from a benevolent dictatorship.

See my other mail a few minutes ago about the details of the voting, 
veto and override vote mechanisms.

And keep in mind that in the end, there is always the possibility of a 
fork, whether the direction is by committee or benevolent dictatorship.


-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/
Provider of Professional MapServer Support since 2000