Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (930 mails)

[Per Jessen <per@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pascal Bleser wrote:

> On Tuesday 08 June 2010 21:53:06 Per Jessen wrote:
> > Bryen M. Yunashko wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 20:44 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
> [...]
> > > But in any case, if we want more independence, we need to
> > > learn to walk the walk.  More in the community need to step up and
> > > do. It's as simple as that.
> >
> > That is the usual song that we (the community) often get. To be
> > honest, it gets quite tiring, even annoying.  It is not the way to
> > win over people, IMHO - in particularly not when it comes from Novell
> > community members.  People will contribute when and as best they
> > can - whining about the community not pulling their weight is not the
> > way to convince/coerce them into doing something.  Over the last ten
> > years I have contributed to/participated in a number of open source
> > projects, but being asked "to step up to the plate" was never the
> > reason. 
>
> I wholeheartedly agree.

Thank you Pascal.  I am quite saddened that it took nine days for anyone
to pick up on that posting.  Unfortunately it says a lot about the
community.

> I have my own little theory about this ^^
>
> The thing is that for a long time, and I believe that all long time
> contributors to S.u.S.E./SuSE/openSUSE can relate to that, the doors
> of deep contribution were closed.

Yes.

> Then openSUSE started, and at first, the community members working for
> Novell, as well as Novell itself, were lagging behind the expectations
> "we" (outside of Novell) had. Finally! our favourite distro as a
> proper open project! yay! 

Personally I had moved on and had long since started working on other OS
projects - by 2004, I had also started running my own business, so
being able to contribute to my favourite distro had to take a lower
priority. 

> At least, I know for myself, that I was very eager for stuff to open
> up and be able to participate a lot deeper into the whole thing than
> what was possible before. And we couldn't wait for it. And it took
> time (which is obvious, when you think about it).
>
> Nowadays the situation -- in my very own and humble opinion -- is a
> bit of the opposite: a lot of things have been opened up and are
> waiting for more contributors, but, and here's the interesting part:
> * we're usually not aware of it, because we literally suck at
> communication (as a better word for "marketing"), pretty much all of
> us (yes, me too) * we haven't been mentored.
>
> There has been some sort of fast forward, without taking the time and
> resources to actively support us community members (mostly the
> non-Novell- employees in this case, but not exclusively) to be
> prepared and able to do the job. But I'm not blaming anyone, it's next
> to impossible to have a precise plan for perfect success in such
> situations.

Well, the strategy that Novell has been pursuing wrt openSUSE, is
IMHO, "let's throw the baby in the water and see if it swims". Perhaps
we're now getting a chance to rectify that. 

> All that, and as said, it's just my very personal opinion which isn't
> worth anything more than that, to say: yes, indeed, it is not quite
> appropriate to say that we should "step up to the plate".

Amen.

 

-- 
Per Jessen, Zürich (14.3°C)

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