[maemo-developers] LCA: How to destroy your community

[From: Jeff Moe]

Here is a good article in LWN about a presentation by Josh Berkus. How many of these points apply to Nokia? I'm afraid way too many.

http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/370157/2a06baf10df8e58a/

Some gems:
1) "It's also important to set up an official web site which is down as often as it's up. It's not enough to have no web site at all; in such situations, the community has an irritating habit of creating sites of its own. But a flaky site can forestall the creation of those sites, ensuring that information is hard to find. "

3) "There should be no useful information about the code, build methods, the patch submission process, the release process, or anything else. Then, when people ask for help, tell them to RTFM."

4) "Project decisions should be made in closed-door meetings."

5) "Employ large amounts of legalese."

7) "Keep the decision-making powers unclear"

8) "Screw around with licensing. Community members tend to care a lot about licenses, so changing the licensing can be a good way to make them go elsewhere. Even better is to talk a lot about license changes without actually changing anything;"

10) "Silence. Don't answer queries, don't say anything. A company which masters this technique may not need any of the others; it is the most effective community destroyer of them all. "

-Jeff