yes. Canons are way more efficient than trust and community building. I mean a tight nit group of people whom respect each other and want to work together is NO match for a group of people who don't respect each other and barely want to work together with a set of canon laws. (or should their be three n's in that)

Yes, bracket placement is the most important issue in a community. If you don't use K&R style bracketing I just can't read your code and the project is a total wash. ;-) Fortunately Eclipse lets me reformat it going in and reformat it going out.

Yes "standards" have worked so nicely in the software industry. Why we have several standards for any one thing. Its certainly better than mutual respect.. For as long as one follows one of the standards, it must be good.

In order to do this, lets set at least 6 months aside each to draft a large legal document, assign penalties for breaking any of the rules. We'll create a new subproject for "Those who have not joined the shining path to enlightenment" for projects choosing not to ratify the canon. Next we can create a "interperator" subproject, in the event of a disagreement among parties in a project the interperator (think of them as lawyers) can be assigned to help interperate the canon and apply penalities to whomever is judged to be in the wrong. The alternative is to get back the the basics...community, mutual respect, dare I say friendship, working for the best ideas, etc. Rigid guidelines are much easier than that. Thats why XP is such crap, a "metaphor" instead of a BUFD. Same prinicipal. Long live the SDLC!