On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Thomas Hertweck <Thomas.Hertweck@web.de> wrote:
On 27/09/10 11:30, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
[...] I don't. He has contributed since he got hired right? That's the only thing that counts. Who cares if he get's payed, by whom, as long as he contributes right?
Sorry, Henne, I appreciate all the work you do and you have my utmost respect for all the contributions you make to openSUSE, but I disagree with you on that one here. Karsten and others have summarized it nicely.
If it was all that easy to come up with good ideas and so on, everybody would be able to do it. However, obviously it isn't easy in reality, that's why companies like Apple can make a fortune with their innovations.
There are ideas and ideas. I would say the biggest limitation we have is not ideas and creativity - we have good people working on cool things with all the freedom they need to express that creativity. Apple's design is done by a team of about 10, maybe 15 designers. Brilliant designers for sure, but I would claim that the combined creativity of all openSUSE people is about as good if not better. Unfortunately we don't have the resources to do what Apple does. But looking at for example KDE and GNOME - they are approaching Apple in many area's. Surely not everywhere, but they do what they do with a very small percentage of the resources.
I fully agree with you that we need people doing the actual work that needs to be done, but excluding opinions and not allowing people to voice their ideas and critics is going the wrong way. After all, a lot of ideas are born through discussions. To give a little example: A society couldn't live with academics only, you definitely need some workers, too. However, a society would also have problems to evolve if there were only workers, and no academics. That's why my personal opinion is that you probably need both. At the moment, we seem to have a clash in the openSUSE community between these two parts. Workers probably don't count the contributions of academics as valuable (I would probably put you in that category), and academics perhaps think the workers' contributions are somewhat overrated. At the end of the day, we need both, it's as simple as that.
Ok, you are right. We need to have a certain signal-noise level, however. Good ideas can be drowned in flames and useless discussions. A solution for this that I like a lot is http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm And note that 'the workers' you describe also have plenty of ideas and creativity - often more than they can even accomplish in their free time, so they might not even be looking for much more ideas...
Many people may not have the time to contribute in form of packaging RPMs, writing software, writing Wiki articles etc. But their daily life as programmer, manager, software engineer, you name it, in a commercial or non-commercial environment may help all of us to see what might work in openSUSE or not. If developers who don't contribute to openSUSE come and say, "oooh, I would be careful making those changes, we have done something similar in our company and you may run into certain problems", then I would say that's very valuable input to openSUSE and we should definitely listen, even if those developers don't actually contribute to openSUSE in the way you define it.
Sure. I clarified myself later on, I was a bit too black and white indeed...
That's also how I see some of the discussions regarding the "community transition" - I am sure not all of us like these discussions, some may think they are completely useless, but maybe something good will come out at the end. It's the project mailing list here, and if some people are worried about certain things, they should be allowed to mention it. If people are unhappy that mailing lists etc are unreliable in America or so (I think I saw a statement like that somewhere), then you shouldn't take this personal and as an affront against Novell, a company providing this service for free, but as an inquiry to see what could perhaps be improved. Behind all the critics is usually a valid point - it may be hard to find at times, but that doesn't mean silencing all critics (as your current approach seems to be from my perspective) is the best way forward. We just need to find the right balance.
I pointed out two distinct problems I had with Jos statement. He stated that leaders within a group usually evolve through the work they do and through their contributions to the group and that only such people have a right to voice their opinions.
Please note that I was quite a bit more liberal - I said anyone who contributed should be listened to. Anyone can voice their opinion, I would however say it's not always helping nor interesting to listen to. Some people just flame and complain and many people underestimate the damage that can do. Just like they underestimate the good it does to someone if he/she hears 'nice work!' sometimes.
If you can't see my point that this is a strange statement from somebody who hasn't been part of that group in the past and who was appointed this job and who gets paid for it... well, then I can't really help. It seems as if others got that point. The second statement he made I took personally. I cite the statement again: "We're not a company - where managers get appointed to a position because they had the right papers and contacts and get paid well - here, those who actually KNOW what they are talking about are in charge." What he's saying here is that (project) managers in the industry have no clue how things work, they are only in charge because they had the necessary network of people to support them and the right references and a lot of money was involved. As a representative of that group (Head of Research & Development in a large company) who works very hard to stay on top of all research and development aspects in order to make the best decisions, you didn't expect me to sit back and just swallow such an offence, did you? I think the openSUSE project could definitely learn a couple of things from the commercial environment.
He. I must admit that statement was quite strong - and I've met plenty managers who were pretty good. But I've also met some who were less good and that is an understatement. I bet you and everyone else here who have worked in bigger companies have seen the same. Politics often become a big part of large organizations and bad decisions (from a technical and often even business pov) get made by people who don't even know what it really is about. Or they do and know the decision will cost their company money, but it will be better for their position. I wouldn't even want to claim it's always due to the people - it seems very much a process issue as well. Misalignment between personal and corporate priorities for example. And in any case, hierarchy means middle and esp senior management is far from the work being done, hence have to rely on others to give them information. And that information is often colored or just plain wrong. Information from people, or from numbers that don't say as much as management might think they say. Sometimes, the complexity of large organizations itself is at fault - or the complexity of the technology. In most open source communities, the structure is far more flat. People usually have influence because others give it to them - like the 'benevolent dictatorship' Linus Torvalds has. And people give this influence because of what they see others do - and in an open community, where most stuff is done publicly and on record (eg mailinglists) this is pretty likely to be quite accurate. Things still go wrong but I would claim that usually influential people in FOSS are rightfully in that position. So I'm sorry if this offended you - I certainly would not claim managers suck. It's just that sometimes, they get away with it in companies. Much harder to do in an open source community. And that is a big plus for us. point in case: I was admittedly in a bit of a bad mood when I wrote some of the mails I send in this thread. Well, I got called out on it and rightly so. In a company, it's possible that due to my position, people wouldn't have done so. Which would've been bad. Anyway. Apologies for all hurt feelings, that was not my intention. Really, I'm a nice guy after a beer or two... ;-)
Regards, Thomas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
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