On 3/3/2010 11:29 AM, Jim Adcock wrote:
You have to be willing to adjust or modify the "high priesthood" system.
I have participated, or attempted to participate, in a number of FOSS projects over my career as a programmer, and I have a few observations which you may find relevant. Every successful FOSS project I have ever observed has started with the vision of a single individual. In the years leading up to 1995, Eric A. Young single-handedly managed to implement the full suite of cryptosystems used in SSL, and in that year made it available on the internet for free. This effort became the foundation of OpenSSL. Until he was lured away by RSA, Mr. Young was the driving force behind OpenSSL. Today, the role of visionary is played by Ralf Engelschall and Ben Laurie. In 1991 Andrew Tridgell, another Australian needed to mount disk space from a Unix server to his DOS PC. Using a packet sniffer he was able to reverse engineer the System Message Block protocol used by IBM's NetBIOS system, and which was the basis for DOS and Windows networking. This work eventually became Samga, a Unix/Linux software suite that provides file and print services to Windows-based clients. Mr. Tridgell still participates, and is the driving force behind the Samba open source project. While many have criticized his alleged heavy-handedness, I believe that the success of the Linux kernel is primarily due to the fact that Linux Torvalds still has absolute authority over what changes go into that kernel. Michael Hart plays the same role at Project Gutenberg that these programming giants played in the development of their respective software projects. Project Gutenberg was the brainchild of Mr. Hart, and he continues to be the driving force and visionary behind the project. While he, with uncharacteristic modesty, primarily credits the volunteers for the nature of Project Gutenberg, I disagree. For better or for worse, Project Gutenberg is the product of Mr. Harts vision and tenacity. Distributed Proofreaders was founded in 2000 by Charles Franks to assist in the production of electronic texts specifically to be distributed by Project Gutenberg. According to my recollection, Mr. Franks' theory was that production of e-texts was hampered by the fact that few people were willing to take on the task of producing an entire e-text, particularly through the arduous text proofreading process. His vision was to take a text and break it up into discrete units (in this case, pages) so that many people could be involved in the proofreading process and lightening the burden. Thus, the one time DP catch-phrase, "Proofread a page a day, that's all we ask." The volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders have become very good at proofreading texts. I have also seen any number of FOSS projects which have attempted to begin through consensus and team building. I can't name any of these projects for you, because they have all either failed or were still-born. I think I have learned this lesson from my observations of these projects: to be successful you must have one single visionary who controls, more or less, the project. Having that visionary will not guarantee success, but not having it will surely doom it. At if a project loses its visionary, or marginalizes him or her to the point where he or she no longer controls the vision, the project will become increasingly ineffective and inefficient, and will descend into in-fighting and turf wars as others try to control the vision. Vision cannot be obtained by consensus. When someone criticizes Project Gutenberg for supposed failings, or the inability or unwillingness to keep up with the times, and Michael Hart responds with his now inevitable suggestion to "JUST GO FOR IT," what he is saying is "what you are suggesting does not match my vision. If you feel your vision is better than mine I encourage you to go elsewhere to pursue it. We can offer some infrastructure support (disk space) and you are welcome to invite Project Gutenberg volunteers to go help you actualize your vision, but I will not substitute your vision for mine." I am not prepared to say that Distributed Proofreaders has lost its vision. It is still proofreading a lot of pages every day. It is clearly /not/ an efficient process, but efficiency was not one of the project goals. We are all familiar with the old saw that while one woman can have a baby in 9 months that doesn't mean that 9 women can have a baby in one month. I don't believe that DP is saying "if one person can proofread a text in 10 days, then 10 people can proofread it in one day," but they are saying "100 people can proofread it in two days." Distributed Proofreaders goal was to increase the speed that texts would be proofread, to lighten the load from any one individual and to make the process more fault-tolerant (if one volunteer quit, the project would not need to be restarted). What has happened is that the needs of the consumer has changed. I'm fairly certain that the proofread texts now sitting in DP's Post-Processing queue would meet Michael Hart's standards (or lack thereof, as he is continually telling me he has no standards) and could be released to Project Gutenberg as is. Other consumers, however, have higher standards, and Distributed Proofreaders is now trying to satisfy those standards as well, and those new standards require post-processing of a work as a single unit by a single person. DP's vision and expertise is in the area of distributed proofreading, not in the area of efficient e-book creation. This is why texts languish in the Post-Processing queue. Your problem, Mr. Adcock, is that you believe you can change the vision underlying either of these organization through rational argument. Vision is an intuitive, almost religious, experience, and blind faith is immune to rationality. It is virtually impossible that you will be able to change the vision either of Mr. Hart or whomever is currently the visionary at Distributed Proofreaders. I suspect that this is why Roger Frank has created his own web site for "roundless proofing;" his vision differs from that of Distributed Proofreaders, and it was simply easier to go his own way than to try and change someone else's vision. I believe I agree with every criticism you have leveled at both Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders, which is to say, I believe I accept your vision. So let me mimic the words of Michael Hart: GO FOR IT! Put together your own project to complete high-quality public domain e-books. You could certainly harvest all of the files currently in the DP post-processing queue to start with. You might be able to grab the HTML files from PG if you can find scans to go with them. Take advantage of the hardware resources that Mr. Newby has offered. Post messages here and at DP inviting volunteers to help you out. No need to return the e-books to either of those organizations; if they want them they will know where to find them. I will help out as much as possible. But please stop trying to convince Distributed Proofreaders or Project Gutenberg to accept a new vision. They are old and are set in their ways. They represent the last internet generation, not the current one. Show us the way forward, and let sleeping dogs lie.