Andreas,

> the reward. In other words, if I were to sign up for that job in 
> Balloon, I get to do the work, and you (or whoever is at the helm) gets 
> to do the say. No deal, as far as I am concerned..

I think you were right-on here.  However..

> generic expression of disgust about a process that actively destroys the 
> necessary sense of ownership in code. Put simply, it means: If something 
> is "my code" then "you" can't rewrite it over the top of my head..

Watch me.  I *will* rewrite it over the top of your head and submit it to
SqueakMap with a "[ANN] New And Improved Chess Game" to the list.  And the
community will love it so much that it will become part of base Squeak.  What
will you do about it?

You can't:
  - stop someone changing your code
  - stop someone sharing it (with due respect to licensing, of course)
  - stop someone else from loading that modified into their image and enjoying
it
  - stop a particular community from deciding to include that work in their
base image

>From my capability-security studies:

  "Do not prohibit what you cannot prevent."

You can:
  - Exert influence to convince any particular community otherwise assuming
you, as the owner, are available and not too busy at that time (e.g., a
"bottleneck").
  - Make threats to leave that particular community, branch-off, etc.

This is the way it is and the way it should be.

Just as no community-decision has the power to control what ultimately goes in
my personal image, no one person has the power to control what goes into the
images built and "owned" by a particular community (unless I create my own
community in which members tolerate the hierarchy).

Tim wrote:
> And as for complaining about people messing with Chess code - well  
> did _you_ show any signs of ownership or care? Did you fix bugs,  
> bring up to date etc? Yes, I'm sure you're busy but who isn't? Why  
> would you expect anyone else to put in effort to maintain packages  
> when you don't?

This is an example of ownership becoming bottleneck.

Andreas wrote:
> ... By doing so, he effectively assumes ownership 
> of that package, therefore directly competing with the group who is 
> working on this stuff. The proper procedure would have been to post a 
> bug report that gets picked up by someone working on this code..

Why is it competition and not collaboration?  Answer:  Because we have not the
infrastructure for deep collaboration.  That's why we probably need ownership
as you describe at this time but eventually I think we will all have freedom
and witness a "community mitosis".  Until then, "submitting a bug report" and
waiting a year (no exaggeration) will continue to be the joke.

> Again, 
> the point is that you need to respect someone's ownership of their code 
> and that means you don't do changes over their head.

With Tweak, you make changes to base Smalltalk over the head of Alan and Dan,
right?  We all start building our code at some level, on top of someone elses. 
I'm sure I will be grateful for the crucial UI foundation work you are
building.  But please lets not emphasize "ownership" in the process in a way
that discourages someone from exploring your Tweak code for improvement and
sharing it for discussion, critique, education, and enjoyment among others. 
That decision is up to them and anyone who wants to follow their code should be
able to do so.  Hopefully you as the owner will participate and help and guide!
 But if you're a bottleneck for whatever reason, let's not let the energies go
to waste.

Cheers,
  Chris