One True Way
Anil Dash: some problems are better solved with lots of different efforts instead of one committee-built compromise.
Perhaps I have an odd sense of humor, but I find it a bit amusing and ironic that Anil’s post triggered a reaction that the ASF should have One True Page to capture the ASF gestalt on this subject.
So, of course, I can’t resist the opportunity to fork that discussion.
Anil’s assertion is, of course, true. I’ll go further and state that the ASF is not the One True Foundation, nor do we have the One True License, nor do we have the One True Way.
The ASF, however is a foundation, and a successful one at that. A core value at the ASF is that you are welcome to fork our code but not take our name(s), where name is what we use to identify the One True Version. The ASF does have a successful license, which again others are welcome to take. And it does have an Apache Way, which is based on committee-built compromise, and this way is is also often emulated.
I see that way as a local optimum. The fact that there are other models out there, even some widely successful models, does not take anything away from we have a model that works for a substantial (and nicely growing) set of communities. And Apache Subversion supports that way very nicely.
While I personally have standardized on git for all projects I manage (the implicit contrast being communities which I participate in), I don’t find the git vs svn discussion to be very interesting. The much more interesting discussion to me revolves around the innovations that are continuing to be produced in github. Pull Requests as an anchor for code reviews, for example, looks positively delicious.