Sigh.
I sighed for you..
Enough talk about communities already, but lets get to the essence here and remove possible "personal opinions" on the word.
(let's be honest it is just a word, so why get upset abou it)
You have to put this a bit in a context of "developer community" at any place you can think of.
Let's review the facts according to the pocket oxford dictionary :
- Body of people living in one place, district or country
Hmm.. not applicable.. World would fit, but then everybody is part of the same
community all the time (don't know if people want that though)
- Body of people having religion, ethnic origin, profession,etc in common.
hey.. the profession (or hobby) looks like what we are actually looking for.
saves a hell of a lot of politics if we use this definition.
- Fellowship (comunity of interest)
Hmm.. Let's look up fellowship..
- Friendly assocation with others, companionship.
I love y'all!
- Body of associates
a PMC ? Or body as " my body has 2 feet, 2 arms". Hmm isn't that called sex or something ? Nehh.. let's not get into things I don't know anything about.
- Status of income of a fellow of a college of a college or society.
I am too stupid to understand this one and I am not looking for all the meanings fellow has!
- Joint ownership or liability.
Hmm.. apache is that I guess. (at least if you are a member). If you have a kid and have that kid together with someone else, you are already a community. Wow!
So let's summerize :
- I program, others do, we program in Java, so we are a java community.
- In more detail jakarta is a community. Since they at least share the interest of programming java. No need for fellowship there, although if fellowship is there, it saves a lot of mails..
- About the first entry : they say I am born on earth (they = parents). People seem to doubt that however. (no I cannot fly like Superman does)
- I am not an apache member, so not part of the liability thing.
Hmm commuity isn't that bad. It's just misunderstood :)