I’ve always said that a community may have a leader, but it’ll never have a single owner. A community will always belong to its members. Now, how a person joins a community is a different story. For example, when we talk about the medical community, we’re not talking about every single person who ever received medical treatments; we’re talking about people who contributed to the medical stuff.
No matter you’re a doctor, nurse, hospital manager, a pharmacy employee/employer, or anyone who serves the medical system, you’re part of the medical community. Many people are getting affected by this community but we all know that not anyone who’s affected is part of this community.
Same thing goes for free software community. No matter what part of the community or which software/thing you contributed to, you’re part of the community. Now, our community may get affected by some people more than others. For example, Mr. Stallman has a serious power over a lot of people. Or GNU project can affect a lot of decisions made by other projects.
My personal opinion, however, is a little different. I accept every user of any free software as a member of the community. Now, with this said, let’s talk about how I think about making decisions in a community.
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