[Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Thomas Dalton]

>> Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and the
>> community such little input?
>
> In my experience, this is the way that most open source projects
> operate. You can download and play with the source code to your
> heart's content, but typically only a handful of "committers" have
> access to modify the code. Average joe user like you and me can submit
> patches if we see fit. Through patches we could build trust among the
> developers and eventually become committers. I would be very
> interested to hear about other successful open source projects that
> didn't use any kinds of safeguards like this.

I'm an average joe and I have commit access. I rarely use it, but
after I'd committed a couple of minor bugfixes I asked Brion what was
required to get commit access and in response he pretty much just gave
it to me. All patches are reviewed before being implemented on the
live site, of course.