Open source doesn’t mean that everyone gets to dictate a project’s direction.
I’ve seen people say “GNOME doesn’t have a community” because they think that an open source community is everyone, and that community gets to dictate the project’s goals. But that’s not really how open source works.
The people who get to decide a project’s direction and priorities are the people who care enough to actually work on the project. And it’s not necessarily some dictatorship thing - often project direction comes from consensus among different people. However, random people don’t get to vote on things that developers might not even want to do.
@brainblasted n00b question about that statement:
Were do:
- people that report valid bugs often, and in some cases provide backtraces
- people that send patches
- translators
Fit in that?
For clarity, what do you consider: work on a project ?
@joao Generally you can exert power in the areas that you contribute to, by contributing. If you want a certain bug fixed, filing an issue is a way to make that more likely. Sending a patch makes it even more likely :)
Beyond that, the same logic applies within a project as outside it: Volunteer work is non-fungible, and no volunteer realistically has any say in what other volunteers are supposed to work on.