On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Richard Brown
On 2 Aug 2015 5:14 pm, "jdd"
wrote: Le 02/08/2015 16:21, Richard Brown a wrote :
We can, and should be, something special for ourselves, our current users, and our future users.
The sentence that end your post (quoted), do not say nothing about power user or makers (I like this sentence, begin it by "as a project")... I think people join a project to have they work spread to as many users as possible.
You are entitled to your opinion, but there is plenty of research from respected experts on the topic who all state that motivations for joining open source projects are normally not altruistic, and are normally due to selfish reasons, like being able to scratch their own itch
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_movement#Motivations_of_Programmer...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
We are no longer in the 90's. Open Source and being free, open, accessible to anyone to contribute is no longer a new and shiny thing. Spreading the word to anyone and everyone made sense back then to find those few who were ideologically attuned to buy into the idea before the rest of the world
The year is 2015. Open source has established itself as A major, if not THE major way of developing software. We need to have a clear story to distinguish us from the millions of other open source projects pople can now contribute to. "We're special because we're openSUSE and we have users who make us special" just doesn't mean anything any more..I'm not sure it ever did..
The word "marketing" is misleading, we should not use it at all. As you said, openSUSE do not make money (let SUSE do that), so have no market. We have to ask us how we can make people comfortable in the openSUSE project.
Agreed. How about we agree to call this "Engagement" like the GNOME Project does instead of Marketing
What we need are some people that accept to work in a *team* to make openSUSE "something special", following the goals of the project, not they own goal.
I'm afraid I disagree on several levels.
For starters, see my earlier links. The major motivators for people to contribute to open source are primarily Selfish, not Altruistic.
Next, I do not believe working as part of a team appeals to everyone, and i think the Project should be structured in a way which encourages both individual contributions (working collaboratively, but not necessarily as part of a team) as well as more structured group work
The projects current focus with Teams is holding us back.
Too much time is spent 'forming teams', and not enough time is spent doing the thing the team needs to do.
We don't need a team of people to do *anything* - we need one person to _just start doing it_
If the problem requires a team to solve it, the team will form naturally once that one contributor has started
Less teams, more people doing things please
I sincerely think that the only thing that can make people accept to work for non personal interest is to reach the larger audience possible.
I sincerely disagree. Volunteers are only going to spend their time on things which also benefit them as well as the greater good.
We need to end this false belief that all, or even most, open source contributors are doing this for altruistic purposes.
We should accept that there are very real, very tangible, and often very selfish reasons people contribute to open source, and we should do our best to Engage with them so openSUSE becomes a natural focal point for those contributions which can help us grow and succeed
Aiding the wider world and a greater audience is a benefit, but not a reason, of doing what we do and the way we do it.
"Come and work with us, working as part of the openSUSE project will make YOU part of something special, the openSUSE project..."
Sorry, this sounds to much like "do stuff for the sake of doing stuff" - we've had such philosophy as our stated goal in openSUSE for 10 years and I think it's time we accept the world does not work that way.
And, by the way, I'm of this sort and I will continue to work for the openSUSE project, as long as I think it's special :-)
Good, and I hope you find reasons to think it's special beyond empty words. I know they sounds nice, but its really important openSUSE has real reasons upon which people are drawn to, use our stuff, and engage with our project. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Given that we are talking about project promotion or distribution promotion. The only thing so far that matches an effort on that end is the request to create backgrounds for the release of 42. What else are we looking to do with this push to entice this audience? I mean, we can discuss the benefits/drawbacks of what target audience we want to work with, but the fact is also that we have no concrete requests to get something done. If we mean graphical work, there has been 0 requests. What or how are we looking to use to promote this focus on power users? -- Andy (anditosan) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org