Organised volunteerism

As part of a longer discussion on a private mailing list[1] Sam Ruby wrote a succinct description of the Apache volunteerism ethos. He wrote:

"The prevailing attitude within Apache is that releases will be done when they are ready, and that such releases will contain only the functions for which there exists volunteers who have an interest in doing the work. At times, there are people who would prefer a more predictable schedule and specific function. There are organizations which provide such assurances. This isn't one of them."

This resonated with me as a participant in the Apache Harmony project which is undertaking a full implementation of the Java SE specification. There are some modules that attract lots of attention in completeness and performance (such as the core LUNI, beans, security, and so on) and others that don't attract so much effort (such as Swing, print, and RMI).

I'm totally fine with that situation since it represents the technological equivalent of the adaptive market hypothesis of financial markets. In our world, people will tend and care for code that is important to them, and the other code by definition is not so important to people.

I've been a contributor to numerous open source foundations and working groups with different styles of working, and there is no "one true way" -- having a variety of organizations with different styles of working ensures that there is going to be a place for a wide variety of people to be comfortable innovating in the advancement of Java technology.

I'm comfortable with those who want to make some code open, and keep other code to themselves. I object to those who claim there is only one way to behave, and try to enforce that on others through restrictive licensing or organizational rules.

[1] Sam kindly gave me permission to take that quote and make it public.