Re: Style proposal [Re: Coding style changes of 2009-06-26 now in the guidelines]

[Michael Widenius]

Hi!

>>>>> "Ingo" == Ingo Strüwing <Ingo.Struewing@stripped> writes:

Ingo> Hi Monty,
Ingo> Michael Widenius, 22.10.2009 20:36:

Ingo> ...
>> In democracy, there is many cases where weights are different.
>> Democracy doesn't guarantee equality, only that everyone has a chance
>> to have their voice heard.

Ingo> Most democracies include a concept of "elections". Usually one human has
Ingo> one vote.

In boards, alliances, companies and many projects this is not the case.

>> Then you also have 'ownership' of the code:
>> 
>> - People 'own' the code they have written.
>> - You don't change other peoples code, without asking them permission.
>> - Only when a person gives up his code, then someone else can take
>> over it.

Ingo> I guess, your concept of "code ownership" is independent from copyright?

Yes.

Ingo> You say that the one, who wrote the code, keeps control over it, even if
Ingo> he sells the copyright for a billion bucks?

First, I didn't sell it; It was the MySQL board. I got a share of if
for my work, as anyone else that had stock.

However, we are talking about an open source project, not a closed
source project.  As long as the project is develop open source and
according to common open source guidelines, the open source rules
should apply.

The 'code ownership' for the coders still should stand for MySQL for
the code anyone has produced.  Why would selling MySQL for example
change any ownership for Patrik Galbraith

The other question is do ownership depend on the license of the code?
Would if be different if the code would be BSD instead of GPL?
My claim is that the license doesn't matter, as this is about open
source conduct.

As long as someone is in the community and producing code and is
prepared to work on the code, he should continue to have ownership of
the code.  If this would *not* be the case, you have a project that no
one wants to contribute to!

>> Another way to see this is also that you should not force the people
>> that produces the most code to code in a style they don't like.  That
>> will just make these people less productive and over time do something
>> else than produce code for that project.

Ingo> But if the majority of developers suffers from this, the project isn't
Ingo> in a good shape either.

If the produce only a minority of the code, they can't complain!

What I am trying to say is that the ones that produces the majority of
the code, and thus most of the value, should have more say.  I think
this is perfectly right as you can live without the minority that
doesn't produce much code but you can't live without those that
produce most of the code.

And don't forget that the owning of code is the standard guideline in
every successful open source project!

I don't think that MySQL should work differently (read worse) than all
other projects?

And even with my scenario, we would get changes done in the coding
standard, just like with PostgreSQL, Linux and other projects. It just
means that people that actually matter for the project would have a
louder voice and we have to discuss more to get decisions done.

I don't think it will help anyone if we have different coding style in
all MySQL forks;  It will just make life harder for us all to work
together and exchange code.

Regards,
Monty