Comparisons and advocacy

Hi Steve,

from an ethics POV, I personally bow to those who have done a lot of work historically, and specially to those doing the work today.

And you only have to look at the stats to see that that MartinD and his Moodle.com team are doing most of the work. There are a ton of other contributors, and they are invaluable. But that does not change the fact that there is a core team getting it done. (I'm happy to say that Catalyst does quite a bit of work, albeit rather "seasonal", I am working to fix that)

There are a ton of users -- I bow to those that contribute documentation, good quality bug reports, qa, helpful posts, etc. The community that gets things done is the community that I respect, and in that sense I think the Moodle is the most ethical and positive environments I have seen. (And I have works in many FOSS projects, too many to list.)

Of course, we often talk about the Moodle Community in a wider sense, and it is an amazing community and I just can't get over how great it is. But from an ethics POV, the documentation project gets done by a tiny subset of the wider community. And I bow to them on documentation issues.

FOSS is plagued with armchair footballers (that just don't get tired) - so this ethical stance is, IMHO, the only way to tell signal from noise. The only ones who get my respect and my ears are those who get things done for the project.

In short: whoever gets it done gets to say how it is done. Want to control a trademark? - register your own! Don't like the Linux kernel architecture bah, write your own as you clearly know better than Linus

In that sense, there's no doubt in my mind: the man at the helm, the man that is getting the job done (and sending emails that point out that if I have time for flamewars, I can surely help fix this or that bug) is MartinD.

So - no, MartinD did not sit back after having a good idea that caught on. He is on the code, every day, fixing bugs, writing new code - as is the core Moodle.com team.

Now - to clear the air ... make sure you do something actually positive before you post to a flamewar like this one - fix a bug, QA 1.8, help polish and expand docs.moodle.org, make a commitment to help a newbie in the forums through. Help from the bottom -- the hard way.

... Not from the armchair!

1. a parent whose only contribution to a child's life was to give it birth before
   
2. letting the community raise it up entirely, and who then
   
3. comes back once the child is raised up to claim it as his own entirely.

1. Martin's contribution to Moodle is far greater than just giving it birth, which, in development terms, would simply mean giving it a name and releasing the first stable version. In fact Martin has been the real parent to that child, guiding its growth as it matures in the community.
2. That community certainly has contributed to Moodle's growth, just as it always contributes, directly or indirectly, to a child's growth. But without the constant guiding eye and counsel of Martin, that growth would have lacked vision and focus, it would have been at the mercy of trends and shifting values in the world. So the community was vital to Moodle's success, but only in combination with Martin's parent-like leadership.
   Martin has been deeply involved in every single aspect of Moodle as it matures. This project has taken over his life. Most of his time is not devoted to entrepreneurship or developing a corporate entity, but to improving Moodle code for the vast majority of users who will never bring him a cent in return. Working with him daily I get to see what he does on a daily basis, and let me assure you that getting stuck in the nitty-gritty code takes a major part of his time.
3. Just as Martin does not claim ownership over his children, he does not claim ownership over Moodle either. However he is duty-bound to provide continuing guidance and protection to both, and wants to ensure that he is always able to fulfill this responsibility. If he decided to stop looking after his children and let anyone and anybody look after them under the pretext that the community has claim over them through their continuing contributions, he would forego this responsibility of care and would be a poor parent indeed. Same with Moodle: he cannot guarantee that his vision of the project will be shared and followed by others, or that Moodle won't be used for purposes that run counter to the philosophy which gave it birth, and which only Martin understands fully (it's his philosophy after all). The trademark is one way Martin has found to fulfill his responsibility of care over the project. Responsibility is precious!
   

Dear Steve

I agree that Moodle was built by a community,  and therefore it seems fair to me as well that community members should be ale to benefit from moodle. Fortunately this what happens. For my own part, I get a massive software suite for free. I sell textbook that is supported by Moodle.

The idea is that different members of the community gets genuine benefits in different areas.

"From each according to his ability from each according to his need," as they say, and the moode.com team have particular abilities in the programming field and fewer needs in the area of online education, whereas many community members have abilities in areas of support say, and greater needs in the area of online education.

Equality does not mean that we all provide the exactly same contributions, or should recieve exactly the same rewards. I think. 

I think what you are saying is that the contrubitions of community members are such that the rank and file deserve a greater degree of access to the benefits, such as the ability to refer to Moodle™ as on your hosting site. Personally I think I agree with you, but I don't think that the opposing view is unethical if it is clear. 

Timothy