[OSM-talk] OSM Culture (was: Bing maps is misplaced)

[Jonathan Bennett]

On 08/12/2010 12:50, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I should apologise here for picking on two innocent individuals. I was
> trying to offer a criticism of the culture of the mailing lists and
> the project as a whole, and a suggestion to look at moving to a more
> scalable model, where policies get agreed, then written down.
On this particular point, I think some of the resistance to having 
"Policies" of this nature is that where you have Laws, you get Lawyers 
whose job it is to find ways of breaking the spirit of those policies 
without breaking the letter of the (or equally *apply* the letter of 
those policies while breaking the spirit). Wikipedia hasn't managed to 
avoid problems by having policies, and I don't think we'd have a much 
easier time if we started writing things in stone.

Discussion and consensus (and maybe even sanctions against those who 
refuse to act according to that consensus) are more important than 
hard-and-fast rules.

Jonathan