Tunes Membership Policy

[Brian T Rice]

As a general comment, what I posted was less aggressive than it sounded.
Contributions don't have to be so substantial; Jecel has mostly been
contributing ideas and discussion over the years, and that's far more than
what 60% of the people on that list have done. My concern is about those
60% who have not and cannot do anything for Tunes.

On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote:

> If you [=3DBrian] wish so, you can remove me of the [old] members page,
> but I still wish to be on the tunes@ mailing list (if possible).

I don't wish it. At least by giving Fare and the rest of us knowledgable
advice, you are assisting.

> I still don't understand what self-claimed members of Tunes have in
> common: I mean that people have an obvious common goal (Tunes as an
> ideal) but not yet a common project (Tunes as a working community).
>
> I'm not even sure that the the very few people who actually
> contributed code share a common project, but they do share a common
> goal. In other words, the few piece of code don't even glue up
> together yet and are not completely leading in the exactly same
> direction.

That's quite true, and part of my idea about "multi-bootstrapping" was
that this may not even be necessary for a little bit of time. The
cooperation at even run-time of several implementations could be better
than trying to re-invent everything in one whole, and may be the key to
our doing this without undue effort.

> And a sidenote, even if Far=E9 (who is my friend, and whom I meet
> regularily face to face - not only by the Internet) don't contribute
> enough I believe he still deserves to remain an honory member (since
> the whole Tunes idea was largly his at first).

He'll contribute; it's in his nature. Most of his contributions are
definitely welcome as well. However, we have fairly firmly established
that the documentation and coordination need something different to push
them to the point of usefulness. There's never any question of whether
Fare's a member: he owns the copyright. It's his project to do with as he
pleases. I just happen to have spent some time persuading him to re-think
things.

> I'm still interested in reflexive systems, notably those knowledge
> based.
>
> If someone wants to close the Tunes mailing list only to code
> contributors, I would understand but believe it will be a wrong
> decision.

I did not intend anything like that at all. I mean simply the
http://tunes.org/members/ "members" page. The mailing list is certainly
for more than the members.

> And I don't consider Tunes as a negative experiment. Actually, I also
> believe that if Tunes has not succeeded yet, it is because some
> conceptual issues (which of course I don't know, I'm only speaking at
> the meta-level here) are missing. Perhaps some formalisation or design
> between the brillant reflexive ideas and an hypothetical
> implementation, or just some hints.

People seem to appreciate our Review areas. Hopefully we can make better
software as well (that people will want to use and will pay some
salaries), on our way to a full Tunes system.

> Notice that several people tried to implement something but did not
> succeed yet. I believe that this is so because reflection is really
> hard.

If there's one thing about this project, it's that it's damned hard to
really work out all the conclusions on specifics. I spend a *LOT* of time
thinking about this stuff, and it's not trivial.

> Regards.

Thanks.

--=20
Brian T. Rice
LOGOS Research and Development
mailto:water@tunes.org
http://tunes.org/~water/