Choosing the Choosers

[Tyler Mitchell]

On December 17, 2005 09:56, Paul Spencer wrote:
> I am starting to believe that from a user's point of view (that's me,  
> I'm not a developer of MapServer) it will actually make very little  
> difference to me in the long term since all I want to do is download  
> the software and build tools on top of it.  As long as the  
> contributors are happy that they can continue to develop and maintain  
> MapServer, I'm ambivalent about where the project lives.

Good points Paul S. and Bill.

I am in a similar boat - I am mainly a user (definitely not a developer).  
From one perspective all I care about is having access to the code.  I trust 
the MTSC to be able to make logical commitments to the long term direction of 
the code in the project.  That is, to do what is in the best interests of the 
project and its community.  The spectre of a fork or (even worse) general 
disinterest in a project is the open source peer pressure that keeps thing 
open and honest.

From another angle, I care less about the code in the project and more about 
my user experience.  I have very high hopes that more project-level 
organisation (and joining the foundation) will help bring my user experience 
to a whole new level.  Even if the code were to stay stagnant, there are a 
lot of (non-technical) things that I would like to see happen so that the 
user base grows and supports one another.

So, I'm partly ambivalent about where the project lives, but partly focused on 
ensuring that it lives in a place that helps the community grow as much as 
possible.

Tyler