"Good software development is not done by committee, it requires strong leadership and tough decisions."I was having a conversation with a colleague at work the other day and we came to the conclusion that sometimes, the only way to get a project moving is to make tough decisions and stand by them. And then, I read this article... Divine intervention eh ;) Democracy is good up to a point after which someone with authority needs to grab the reins and take a stand - regardless of what the "minions" think.
I have really liked the way the Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix project has been managed since its inception. The project was started by a bunch of developers who were tired of the excessively process-centric and bureaucratic development style of the Mozilla project. This haloed bunch (3 to begin with) were given the free hand to make tough decisions, exclude uber-geek features from Mozilla and add completely ground-breaking user-friendly new features designed to make Firefox resemble IE. Being a user of Mozilla since early college days but frustrated by the lack of traction on the many features I thought the browser needed, Firefox became the must checkout browser for me. I found its development model so radically different from the other open source projects I had tracked - a quasi-closed open-source project - that I considered the project a rebel. This rebel status, the frantic pace of development and a stready stream of innovative ideas keep me tuned into the project. Developers often don't engage in huge discussions over what is right and correct and don't try to make all the geeks happy - they have a charter; to make the world's most user-friendly browser and to beat IE at its game - and they have stuck to it without regard for people's philosophical, religious or pedantic "this is how it should be" bickerings. A great development model for other "Open Source" projects to emulate, IMO...
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