On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Bryen <suserocks@bryen.com> wrote:
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."
Nail on the head there. I don't program. Barely able to write shell scripts(of course, have never had much of a need for them). Since the community became open, I've tried to do beta testing for bug reports since 10.0Beta. However, I have a limited set of programs that I use.
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?
Time is a big problem for a lot of us. Like I mentioned to Andreas previously, Full time job, kids, and other things keep me from being able to contrib as much as I would like. Having my son in Boy Scouts is another time taker, but it's more important to me as well.
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 LUG in my area never went anywhere and I'm not even sure if it still exists. I've basically quit asking people to try linux because they just aren't interested. Security and stability aren't as important as being able to use whatever windows only program they have or if their hardware isn't easily recognized. Of course, if any of them ever had to re-install windows, they'd have more work to do, but that's why I have a job in a computer shop.
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...
Agreed. However, I don't have the answer. Maybe we can come up with something between all of us tho. Also, a little less flaming would help. A lot of us are passionate about some things, but having the list degrade into name calling and "mine is better than yours" isn't attracting people....... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org