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Auteur: Martijn Dekkers
Datum:  
Aan: dng
Onderwerp: Re: [Dng] Dng Digest, Vol 5, Issue 11
>
> I think of another side of the medal: how the just starting project. w/
> a lot of work to be done ahead, is going to be protected in the future
> -- to share not the fate of «Debian»?
> [...]
> But, at the first, what is planned to perform to protect «Devuan» from
> the guys, that got hold of the fantastic project «Debian»? In other
> words, if the guys come to «Devuan» and by their cruelty will start
> to «help» some of developers to corrupt the project, do abnormal,
> unnatural for the project things -- similar like constitution of
> «Debian» appeared, finnaly the «systemd» was forcibly set up: how we
> will protect our project?
>


At the moment, Devuan runs under the "benevolent dictator" model, which
counter-intuitively works quite well in many ways - not just for Free
Software projects. I believe that a lot of the issues we see in Free
Software Projects are in a large part due to the introduction of
"democracy" into these efforts. A single (or very small group, i.e. VUA)
determined "dictator" that provably has the best interests of the project
and its community at heart is a lot better over a "democracy" type model,
which - anyway you look at it - comes down to "mob rule". The wish of the
majority isn't always what is best for the project - see Debian. When this
dictatorship is combined with some form of meritocracy you have a model
that has, over the past 30 years or so, proven itself to be highly robust
in the face of adversity.

Of course, it all comes down to the technical and political skills of the
dictator. If the dictator behaves himself like an idiot, the project isn't
going to get very far, but it is a lot more likely that a "democracy"
behaves a lot more like an idiot, and much earlier in the lifecycle of the
project. I have rarely seen democratic processes work well in FLOSS
projects - for every success there are an overwhelming amount of failures.

I, for one, welcome our VUA overlords!