I’ve read through your blog, and my reactions to the on-going dispute can be found as a comment to the latest blog posting.

You are of course free to link to this blog entry, although I caution you that I was talking strictly about benevolent dictators in the virtual realm, and I don’t think it carries over well into “meatspace”, i.e., the real physical world.

Even in the virtual world, successful open source software project leaders, even though who are considered ‘benevolent dictators’, need to be able to delegate large chunks of design decisions to others. Linus doesn’t tell me how to design the ext4 file system, nor does he tell James Bottomley how to design the SCSI subsystem. In fact, given that a ‘benevolent dictator’ can not force anyone to do anything, the best way what is needed for a successful project leader in this mould is servant leader.

One other suggestion — Inga, you may want to consider carefully your use of the title “The Village Elder”. It may be a true statement from a standpoint of your chronological age, but to the extent that it is a claim to leadership, I can see how it might annoy those who have been working at the Factor e Farm for a longer time than you. One of the key aspects of those who are successful servant leaders is that titles are bestowed on them by others, and they generally don’t claim titles for themselves. You don’t see Linus Torvalds signing letters as “Linus Torvalds — Benevolent Dictator of Linux”, nor would you see Mother Teresa signing letters as “Mother Teresa — Selfless Saint”. Servant leaders subsume themselves to enable others to work together to make the common goals of the community a reality, and it generally is the community that bestows titles and respect on the servant leader. Furthermore, when they receive accolades, they are generally very careful to spread the credit around to all who deserve it, since that is the best way to attract more people and keep the ones who are part of the community bound together in common cause.

I found your above posting just in time. At Factor e Farm we are facing some problems regarding ‘benevolent dictator’ versus so-called ‘democracy’ right now.

Maybe you have a few moments to take a look at our blog at http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/ and then will allow me to link your above blog entry to our blog.

Thanks in advance,

Inga – The Village Elder