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Our Blogs Open Sauce The rise of the FOSS spinmeister | The rise of the FOSS spinmeister |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Friday, 25 January 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 This class of spinmeister is easily able to gain a foothold in some project or company simply because most of the genuine technical types in the FOSS sphere - the ones who actually make things happen - are more inclined to express themselves through their coding skills. They shun the limelight and hence it is easy for the spinmeister, who poses as someone championing the same values, to gain a toehold as a "spokesman" or an "advocate." Featured Whitepaper
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To be fair, there are spokesmen and advocates in the FOSS community who do a professional job; this article is not about these honest souls. No, I am talking about the class who will do anything to pimp themselves, no matter what damage it does to the project or company with which they are associated. The spinmeister has to pretend that he/she can do some technical work as only very big projects can support someone whose exclusive job it is to spin. There is an easy workaround - volunteer for a technical task and then do nothing about it; indulge in the most extreme irrelevancies when asked about it by technical colleagues and pretend that you never got that email inquiring about this or that. In the average workplace, the people who man the IT helpdesk always make a simple task - even something like changing screen resolution - look like a Herculean endeavour that requires three forms to be submitted in triplicate. The FOSS spinmeister cannot do this as those asking questions within the project are generally technical people who are extremely precise and competent. Hence the spinmeister resorts to being obscure in his/her replies or else attacks the person who asked the query and personalises the whole episode. The spinmeister has a sense of security in using such tactics because most of the queries raised by his or her colleagues are buried deep in the mailing lists of this project or that and rarely see the light of day - unless some journalist, someone who actually is a practitioner of the craft, brings them to the surface. Hence, it is not surprising that this class of spinmeister is deeply suspicious of journalists (once again, we are not talking of the four-tale penpusher here) and attempts to discredit those who could one day expose his or her game. Though the spinmeister takes credit for any and every bit of progress in the project in which he/she has inveigled a place, those who are responsible for the progress tend to do nothing. The reason? FOSS projects are by and large low-key and the work is its own reward. And even if there is the occasional explosion of anger directed at this fool who is intent on gouging what advantage he or she can from the project, it lies deep within some mail archive or the other and the chances of it seeing the light of day are small. |
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