I'm all for collaboration, but a germane part of open source is freedom. That includes freedom to fork or collaborate. I always hope (and encorage) devs to collaborate which I think yeilds better results, but the instant you try to enforce that, to force collaboration, it will break. People will work on whatever they want and if you remove their ability to work on that, they just won't work, (really they just won't share what they work on). I agree with the concept, but I think its impossible to implement, beyond encouraging, persuading, mediating, and helping everyone play nice together.alex stone wrote: would the company be better served in "removing" some of that choice, and building and maintaining a dedicated distro, in which ALL the community pour their effort, with the potential for a mutual community reward. (And if this horrifies some of you, then do you want a financially sound company based on a common code set that devs can work with, or stick with the myriad of choices, and dissipate the energies of not only devs, but other important contributors, like manual writers, website builders, those who will enthusiastically market the company, those who test?)
Perhaps stating the obvious, but if you are doing a business venture you (are stupid not to) do your market research. Go where the money is. If its spread across all genres and you have to resources to make specific tools for it, awesome, if not, find your niche. Someone needs to be willing to do this research, and if conducted well, I think the numbers will be reasonably convincing for the group.alex stone wrote:Who decides which projects are "worthy", and what the design and commercial intent of The Linux Audio Company takes? Is it just electronica/sampling/synth based, or does the company go the whole nine metres, and build for all, in the same marketplace and user demographic as mainstream commercial offerings?
Once again, you can beg, you can plead, but in the end in an ecosystem where you cannot force collaboration it has to come from the devs. We're really talking about a Co-op I think. Its based on mutual agreement of terms and if you don't agree, you don't want to join. The challenge is making joining appealing enough to gain that critical mass.alex stone wrote:Who sets quality control standards, and can build relationships with devs to collaborate in a constructive, mutally beneficial team, where some personal design choices may be put aside for the greater good, and in the pursuit of consistency across the distro? Will devs be willing to modify, or some cases even give up their ideas (at least in the LACompany structure) to have their app in the pot? (with the potential for financial gain.)