On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 12:37 -0500, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:
Hi,
the idea is nice in principle, but it all comes to who can do that.
If this means reducing resources for the next main release, I don't think it is an advantage, just to have more attention from the press.
On the other hand, if this is done by volunteers (how can it be official, if so?), that's OK. But it has to be sustainable on the long run.
Best, A.
First of all, whether a person who is part of the community and works on an aspect of the openSUSE project while being paid or not paid does not have any correlation to whether the action is considered "official." The assumption that an unpaid community member is less than a paid person is a gross misperception and misrepresentation of what the Project and Community are all about. As for "official", that is also something of a perception by the world at large. What does "official" mean to people? To them, it means value, reliability, support, and reputation. Value because of what the product provides, reliability because we know it works and support because we know the community behind it can sustain it. Reputation because people know others who have used the product and are satisfied with it. If the community believes strongly in providing respins as an additional product of the Project, there is nothing that prevents them from doing that. If you want the product to be well embraced by the public as well as by the Project itself, then you need to ensure that the infrastructure (note items mentioned above) are in place to sustain it. We can easily grab headlines each week by saying we're doing this and that. And the week after that, what we said last week is forgotten as people move on to the next juicy news tidbit. We shouldn't ever put our weight behind any product just for the sake of grabbing headlines. Please don't make headlines the driving factor behind your project. What we should be doing is focusing on mindshare. Mindshare is when people say "I want Linux", the first thing that pops up in their head is openSUSE because they've heard that name over and over even if they don't know Linux. That's what the U guys have done and every time I broach the subject of Linux to a non-Linux/non-technical person, it seems the first word out of their mouth is "Ubuntu." So guys, you want to grab headlines? Focus on the mindshare aspect. That's where you'll win in the long run. Otherwise, let's not go for cheap stuff just to make a splash. Eventually, that splash returns to a calm body of water, and then what? -- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member openSUSE-GNOME Team Member GNOME-A11y Team Member www.bryen.com (Personal Blog) www.planet-a11y.net (Feed aggregator of the Accessibility Community) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org