Re: [libreoffice-website] [Drupal] The road ahead and missed opportunities

Narayan,


Le Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:34:53 +0530,
Narayan Aras <narayanaras@hotmail.com> a écrit :

> Hi Charles,
>
> > > Else we would have left OOo because of a "dictatorial" behavior of
> > > Oracle, to get that behavior from the SC.
> > > (Out of the frying pan into the fire?)
>  
> > I don't see it that way. It's perhaps misleading to call a
> > dictatorial behavior anything that does not suit your vision. 
>
> The Drupal site was NOT our vision. 
> It was based on an earlier decision by the SC itself.

No, or rather: Silverstripe was chosen (and I hope you realized that
was always the SC decision) with the *possible option* (note the
conditional form) of considering Drupal in several months.

That's a very far cry from "let's implement Drupal". But unfortunately
some people came in here with the impression that Drupal was the first
choice. We -not just the SC- corrected that impression. Nothing really
changed, Drupal was always discussed. We had to clarify it once and for
all at our latest SC meeting. So it its far from being a complete turn
around. 

This morning you wrote something about Drupal. I felt I had to be even
more direct . And although this did surprise and perhaps offend you, it
's also obvious you didn't know about the status of the website. 

> What has changed from the last decision to warrant a complete turn
> around?
>
> And regarding the "dictatorial" behavior, consider your sentences-
> 1. Who the hell are you anyway?
> 2. What part of that don't you understand? 
>
> They are not exactly the shining examples of the customary European
> politeness. Imperious at best, dictatorial at worst.

Obviously it's not polite, but it's neither dictatorial or imperious.
It's blunt and uncivil and it's not supposed to be the standard on our
mailing lists :-)

> > Besides, Free and
> > Open Source Software is not exactly democratic. I can't really seem
> > to understand this notion that Free Software  = I do whatever I
> > want. That only applies to code, and yet, with limits. 
>
> Again, we were working according to SC's past decisions, not our own.
> So what's wrong in questing that sudden change of mind?


It really wasn't a change of mind, and let me stress this again: the
SC's decision was never, ever, to have people work on Drupal. The
website was meant to be developed using Silverstripe; the brilliant
seconds, the Drupal fans, were quite loud and pressing and stressing
out the advantages of Drupal, and in the end the "future option" on
Drupal was mentioned as something we could be studying in the future;
what we did not expect, and what we (the SC) did not manage was that we
would have to clarify our position again and again on this. 

> > Simply, we have a website a team. It seems some people are not happy
> > with that so they will complain about anything that does not fit
> > what they would have hoped. It is unavoidable, but it is equally
> > useless to try to pressure contributors (and the SC) into decisions
> > that are opposite to what's already been decided.
>
> But surely we can question arbitrary (=dictatorial) decisions, and
> expect a POLITE answer?

You may expect polite answers, that is absolutely true. But the SC does
not take arbitrary decisions. Right now what is wanted is to leave room
for people who work on the website (libreoffice.org) and not to discuss
on the merits of alternative solutions. 

Best,

-- 
Charles-H. Schulz
Membre du Comité exécutif
The Document Foundation.

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