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. 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. 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! 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. 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". [...] cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser@opensuse.org> /\\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill _\_v FOSDEM::6+7 Feb 2010, Brussels, http://fosdem.org