Community Processes

From MapbenderWiki

One thing about community processes is that you can only talk about them after they happen. They cannot be planned as they are inherently chaotic. One way to document this process and make it transparent to newcomers is the use of Wiki technology.

One of the greatest recent examples in the spatial Free and Open Source Software realm is the OSGeo Wiki. It is the think engine and collaboration market place of the OSGeo and all that has, will and should happen there.

Currently the OSGeo structure, site and Wiki are a mess, I was slightly taken aback when I learned that people trying to find their way about the OSGeo hompage simply capitulated. There is too much already, it is disconnected and there is no structure. This was what people told me. This is not a failure but a phase of development and we will address this.

Finding out who "we" are and what "we" "want" are two things that should always be kept in mind when talking about community processes. There is no such thing as a clearly set "we" and as soon as it does exist the community process is dead. Process means development and development means change. Any change that is larger than 10% to whatever there was before causes pain. As "we" (sentient beings in general) tend to try not to hurt we also try to keep change at painless level. The solution is to give everybody a chance to develop with their own (appropriate) speed.

If the overall vector that is represented by the sum of all the speed of all the community points into one general direction then the community process can be described as successful.