Hello Paul,
This went without response, but it contains some interesting
points which are worth discussion, so I'd like to make some comments.
Note: no flame is intended!
Sunday, December 23, 2007, 2:02:40 AM, you wrote:
> Graeme Gregory wrote:
>> I personally don't feel that this lends a good impression of the OE
>> project and the Angstrom distribution.
> Flame me if you wish*, but as someone who's not really an insider,
> people outside see angstrom/oe as a clique, a private club.
IMHO, and as far as I used to interpret attitudes of other core and
long-contributing developers, this is not how we'd like "outsiders" to
see OE/Angstrom. Instead, OE, and especially, Angstrom, is built on
open-source principles, with community being very important factors.
So, what we'd like newcomers to understand is that it is active and
technically-wit community, of which everyone is welcome to be a
member/participant.
> I think
> there's a lot of respect for the angstrom team's abilities, but also a
> lot of fear (being flamed, being treated an idiot instead of accepted
> as a newbie, being fobbed off with stock answers, told to read the
> experts-only documentation etc).
As many other open-source projects, OE/Angstrom is based on
meritocracy, so, to have more weight, you've got to do more ;-). The
rest is common for any human society at all: noone's going to stare
with open mouth at a newbie coming and exclaiming something "smart",
someone may even chuckle, but those are so humanly matters, it's still
more of "fun", than "fear". But any society *needs* newbies and fresh
blood to keep functioning and growing, so newcomers are always welcome
in OE/Angstrom. Of course, as in any technical society, those newbies
who have read some docs before asking questions, are even more
welcome, than those who haven't ;-).
> Many times people simply don't actually know what question to ask, and
> find other distro communities more friendly and forgiving. I'm not a
> big ubuntu fan, and don't see it as anything special, but I think a
> bit attraction is their welcoming community.
Ubuntu is great example of what kind of community open-source based
project can achieve, and why we feel confident and directed in the way
we do it (i.e. in open, community-based, meritocratic way). But note
that Ubuntu has great deal of resources to pumping their social way,
plus technically they stay on the giant's shoulders (Debian). If you
take Embedded Linux distros, then Angstrom is simply unparalleled
effort, as it tries to be truly an Embedded *Linux* distro, not an
Embedded Linux distro for some *devices*. As for "welcoming" feeling,
I'm not sure someone can easily point us to similar project to learn
from, I'm afraid. Let's do some names, sorry: Familiar project grew
gradually closed, cathedral based, in the end they don't even share
with community source tree and release dates (with expectable results
on community). pdaXrom is also closed project, where some "l33t" does
stuff for mere mortals, and those who want to contribute may wait at
the gates for "open positions" to which they can apply with requests
(I guess, signed, and in 2 copies ;-) ). There're rumors of some very
poor attitude from OpenWRT core devels, etc.
All those issues are however likely not because embedded people are
bad, but because the area is complex, and there's lack of critical
mass in the community - even to handle fluent communication. Many
projects respond to these traits by growing closedness and elitist
attitudes. But that's not an Angstrom way. We want to overcome them
by creating multi-device and device-neutral community, so we have
critical mass of people working on the *distro*, not on individual
devices going out of use tomorrow. So, we're going to have the
critical mass to be reasonably friendly even to complete,
silly-questions asking newbies. And for this, we need different
members in community, not just developers, but evangelists, believers,
good pals, and just lounge people ;-). In the meantime, when
developers oftentimes respond to questions, those are sometimes too
terse and sharp - that's because devels are very short of time - they
can use it to fix bugs after all! And still they choose to answer, not
just blindly hack, because community and newbies are important.
Sorry for long mail.
--
Best regards,
Paul mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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