{{{ "... leaders often tell their charges that hard work will lead to success. Indeed, this theory of
- reward being commensurate with effort has been an enduring belief and a moral imperative in our society, one central to our self-image as a people, where the main chance is available to anyone of ablity who has the gumption and persistence to seize it. Hard work, it is also frequently asserted builds character. This notion carries less conviction because business people, and our society as a whole, have little patience with those who, even thought they work hard, make a habit of finishing out of the money. ..."
- -- Robert Jackall "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers }}}
It would be nice to have a Positive view here explaining how Merit works at Apache, etc. The below is some interesting contextual analysis but I'm thinking of the first time viewer who comes in and is wondering how Apache works. It might be nice to give them a happy day scenario before telling them about the dirty aspects. In such a way as one might tell the NewGuy at the office all of the nice things about your team before telling him who the bad guys are and the gloomy stuff... Just MyHumbleOpinion.
The meritocracy movement strives to overcome society's tendency to sort people into the same caste their parents occupied, and in its place, encourage inter-class movement by measuring on the basis of merit. The classic example of the meritocracy movement was Harvard's introduction of the SAT as a scheme to displace at least some of the the dull sons of wealthy alumni from admissions and allow bright poor farm boys to take their place. Sadly, any objective merit tends to drive out what is not measured; so the SATs fail to measure people skills ...
In the context of Apache, the term meritocracy has tended to mean that those who merit it get various RightsOverTheCode. For example, in the httpd PMC, a SixMonthConsistentConstructiveContribution rule is roughly followed to guide who is given a PMC membership, but we are still struggling with the ProblemOfForcedRetirement. Conversely, CommitRights tend to be more lightly given out.
Some parties have argued that the meritocracy model of Apache encourages AlphaMaleBehavior and we might better adopt a GuildModel instead; of course both metaphors are just as troubled with historical baggage as the Meritocracy metaphor.