Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (673 mails)

[Bryen <suserocks@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 14:44 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
> * openSUSE is community based and community driven - but we have
> Novell
>   engineers doing engineering work with limited time and resources.
>
>   Community means not only discussion but also contribution - and I've
>   heard many requests about KDE3 and KDE4 but so far only saw Carlos
>   stepping up and saying "KDE3 is so important for me that I create a
>   KDE3 LiveCD for openSUSE 11.0".
>
>   It's good to get input and help with prioritization but how can we
> get
>   more people working on KDE to maintain KDE3 and to improve KDE4?

This is a subject I planned to talk about on my blog this week, but
since topically, you beat me to the punch, I'll respond here in the
spirit of creating great long threads.  :-)

Honestly, I think this question applies to a larger scope than just KDE
discussions.  Whether it is KDE or some other project within openSUSE,
the thing I hear quite often is that we don't have enough community
members to contribute.  And by contribute, I mean doing any of the
technical tasks associated with adding/maintaining, etc.

But the question asks "How do we get people to step up."  That implies
there is a plethora of people with the proper skills out there that
aren't stepping up.  My belief is that the opposite is more true.  There
are a plethora of people who don't have the proper skills, want to learn
the proper skills, and thus cannot step up at this point in time.  How
often have we heard someone say "Let me know how I can help, but just so
you know, I'm no coder."

What I'd like to see is the openSUSE Board, the community, and Novell
take a look at this gap.  Think of ways we can mentor people, especially
newcomers to acquire the necessary skills to tackle and maintain the
various tasks required to keep openSUSE afloat.  Either Feed the People,
or Teach them to Grow themselves, right?

Oftentimes, people who decide to try Linux do so because they want to
improve themselves and their technical expertise.  Befriending others
and getting guidance within a community often presents them with a huge
array of information and little guidance about solidifying their chosen
path of expertise.

The benefits to teaching, mentoring, training newcomers is exponential.
1) You get more people available to help out, 2) you attract new users
to openSUSE because they view openSUSE as the place to really get their
learn on, 3) That spreads the word to even more people to try openSUSE
and 4) increases even more available people to help out.  

But until we figure out how to close the gap between "I want to help"
and "I don't know what to do." that question posed at the start of this
thread will continue to live on...

Bryen



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