Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Forthcoming Book: The Art Of Community

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

> I'm curious about why so many software developers can be found in
> Cohousing communities? A number that I've met in different
> communities seemed to have been invaluable in helping organize
> information and use tools to assist during challenging parts of the
> project.
>
> Craig (former software developer)

I've observed the same thing.  I think in low-personal-stress
decisionmaking the dynamics are similar between coho and software, and
there the open source process tools and culture add value.
Potentially a great deal of value, and perhaps so much value that
non-developers might believe they are seeing the whole open source
ball of wax, because it seems absurd that this much value is just the
smaller and less important part.

In high-personal-stress decisionmaking the dynamics are different,
because the political and engineering realities are entirely
different.  I'd caution against trying to apply open source culture to
coho.  Shared owners of real estate do have to "agree" on paint color
or they can be forced, but open source software developers don't ever
have to agree, and can pick up the whole ballpark and go home.

                                                        Brian