The Famous Actor Problem
August 23rd, 2003
It reminded me of a story told to me by a friend about the community theater group that one lucky day managed have a famous actor offer to join the company. But, when it came to perform the play the famous actor’s presence on the stage was so powerful that everybody else seemed to disappear into the back ground.
That’s not good for your community.
It reminds me of the general law of community health that I came up with a while ago:
A successful open development community can be said healthy when the community survives its creators.
Ben continues:
The famous actor problem is yet more subtle when you have a cabal of famous actors at the head of your group.
I can’t stop thinking that the ASF hasn’t yet survived its creators, nor the Linux kernel.