The Community is the Company

[João Miguel Neves]

On 21 May 2001 01:48:04 +0200, loic at gnu.org wrote:
> 
>       I wanted to share with you the new document of FreeDevelopers.net
> that looks interesting to me:
> 
> http://209.249.55.157/company/CommCo/
> 
[Warning: I'm a Computer engineer who has taken a few business classes
and helps somes companies top level management understand their
systems.]

It's interesting as an idea, but solely as that. This won't work. The
reason why free software has worked so well so far is the connection
between users and developers: the user is the develloper. Even
Microsoft, who is usually accused of not listening to its customers has
the biggest usability labs in the world (yes, one of the reasons word
has so many features is that they put "everything" in it the usability
labs tell them to).

Now, if you believe Microsoft is not a sucessful company, from not only
a financial view, but also from a political/advocacy point of view, then
ignore this.

The structure they propose is not different from proprietary software
companies, it's just like them, but like the ones who were beaten up by
MS. I believe this proposal was done with the best of intentions, but it
has no way to survive, at least not in the big picture.

BTW I believe it's impossible to have a single entity doing the role
proposed for freedevelopers.net. Can someone explain me why, on a
networked world, someone proposes a single entity point of access ? 



-- 
                                                Joao Miguel Neves