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March 22, 2004
Getting to know you
David Weinberger has written an article on how the Web has changed his name. An interesting observation that also holds true in Open Source communities. Because of the way members of Open Source communities interact in a (mostly) friendly and personal fashion this also holds over to email exchanges and personal meetings that take place outside the community but with people you "know" from inside.
Matters become even more interesting if the language switches into say German. German allows you to use the "formal" Sie (you) or the familiar "Du" (you) when addressing someone. In business relationships most customer/vendor conversations take place using the Sie form - together with surnames. But what happens if you were previously talking to that person in the context of the Open Source community you both participate in? To my surprise (after years of painstakingly learning when to use the formal form for "you") - people have little problem retaining the familiar form outside the community. Now there are definitely advantages in being able to select between a formal and informal "you" - but on the whole I think relationships in general profit more from the informal.
Posted by Matthew at March 22, 2004 11:16 AM
Comments
interesting tidbit:
after the daimlerchrysler merger, they had to chose between the formal daimler way (german: "Sie", surname) and the informal chrysler way (first name).
they chose the middle way (first name, but still "Sie" for german language discussions)...
Posted by: sdf at March 22, 2004 02:50 PM