Hey Folks, Thanks for the feedback!
I'll address each major point in the thread in order. While this is a long post, I don't want to chew up list space with many separate replies. David Boyes wrote: > Given that any useful question to the development community (or the user > community, > for that matter) is likely to require supporting materials like logs that > will in no possible > way fit in 140 characters, can I ask what's the practical point of a Bacula > Twitter account > other than to seem trendy? It's useless for diagnostics, and almost useless > for announcements. I don't expect that we will field well-informed support questions via Twitter. Instead, I expect messages such as: After hours of wresting with bacula, settled for tar backups tonight. Sorry linux lovers- windows was easier to backup. To which a suitable response might be: Sorry to read this! Visit irc://irc.freenode.net/bacula for immediate help & skim http://wiki.bacula.org for additional resources. As for announcements, Identi.ca and Twitter are well-suited for this task, as other projects (like the EFF, FSF, Mozilla, SFLC, Ubuntu and others have realized.) > It seems kind of silly to me to try to turn what we do in these mailing > lists into sound bites for terminal ADD sufferers. Twitter is no replacement for mailing lists. As for ADD sufferers, I did not realize that I had so many peers using Twitter. > Also, if this is a Bacula Systems thing, then they should be funding, > staffing and/or supporting it. As you comment, this mailing list isn't a > forum for promoting commercial ventures, and I would argue that if > @bacula is to represent the project, not the commercial company, > then anything commercial should be clearly separated and identifiable > as such. I've set up a separate @BaculaSystems account for Bacula System's needs and interests. I'm happy to keep an eye on the @bacula twitter feed by myself to see if it has community value, but I don't expect Bacula Systems to pay to maintain it. As for promoting commercial interests, I think that my recommendation is clear. Do we agree or disagree with the recommendation. Alternately, is there another recommendation? ---- Phil Stracchino's seconding of David's opinion noted. ---- Jon Pounder wrote: > Gee isn't that the sort of stuff I would expect to get in an rss feed ? Indeed. Identi.ca and Twitter emit RSS feeds as well. > or is rss dead now that 12yr old girls have discovered twitter ? > Since I don't know any 12yr old girls that make backups, I think we can > safely say this was a waste of time. Your sarcasm is duly noted. The Twitter users who have posted about Bacula seem to be average working devs and sysadmins for the most part. As for twelve-year-old-girls making backups, wouldn't it be great if more of them did? Great hackers often start young. ---- Dan Langille jumped in. Thanks Dan! He also noted that existing policies should be sufficient. I'll go looking for the policies. I didn't find them in the likely places (https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel or http://bacula.org/en/?page=maillists) ---- David wrote in response to Dan: >> David: was there something in particular which made you think the >> Twitter account was a Bacula Systems thing? > In the first few paragraphs of his note, he says that he has been advising > the Bacula Systems people on community support et al. Since this is the > first time I've seen this discussed in any public form, it's pretty hard not > to come to the conclusion that this is part of an advice package provided to > Bacula Systems, and thus originates from them. He also said that he had been > updating this thing on their behalf for several months. I suggested to Bacula Systems that they should use Identi.ca and Twitter and set up accounts on their behalf. I've set up the @bacula account as a community resource. As was clearly stated, the @bacula account should not be controlled by Bacula Systems. Dan has already addressed the material error of the length of time that the account has been updated. > To be honest, I no longer can tell who is doing what for whom in this > project. The boundaries are very unclear, and I've already made my > objections to the current state of affairs known beforehand and am > supporting the decision that was made within the scope of what we can do > without a conflict of interest. This, for my part, is a topic for another day. ... > He asked if possible commercial announcements could be made. I think not. If > the @bacula Twitter id is to represent the Project, then it should not > advocate any commercial entity. Making commercial announcements under the > imprimatur of the Project using Twitter is just that, advocating a > commercial entity. Actually, I recommended that, "we should mention new products and new support, but that is more for informing people, building good relationships between vendors and the community, and showing that Bacula is a vibrant project with many different kinds of participants." I'd prefer to see an actual rebuttal of my argument, than a rebuttal of a partial summary. Now, if - after I've poked you with the above statement - you still feel the same way, I'll note it as an objection. > Going back to the Twitter thing, if you're just going to post a URL, what > advantage does doing it through Twitter give you? For sending out release and security notices, the only benefit is that you reach people who've chosen to use Identi.ca and Twitter as meaningful channel. There's not much more to it. For more reactive use of Identi.ca and Twitter, each provides immediate and direct contact with people who care enough about Bacula - perhaps because it is pissing them off or they are happy with it - so that we can encourage them to become a part of the community. > I still fail to see the point -- it doesn't enhance the project much over > just sticking the > information on the mailing list, If people choose to use the channel, then it has value. > it requires additional software for some platforms True enough. You can easily post with curl and read with any feedreader, but the experience is not great. > and it subjects you to yet another source of advertising -- all in the name > of being "hip". I've not suggested that anyone not using Identi.ca or Twitter sign up for it or participate (beyond > Backups aren't hip. Backups are *supposed* to be boring, dull and > invisible -- until they're needed. Getting someone to do Twitter is at > best a marketing "ooh -- do the new cool thing of the moment" > move rather than any significant improvement in how the project is run > or supported. I too doubt that a Twitter account will improve project governance. I do believe that Identi.ca and Twitter will give the project a low-effort way to help grow the community and ensure that people have a better experience with Bacula. > If we have volunteer cycles, let's use them to provide > packages on more non-Intel platforms or do more frequent documentation > updates, or something that actually improves the product. Doing Twitter > seems to be marginal benefit at best. Not all volunteers will be able to package software or code (though most should be able to meaningfully work on the docs in some way.) Having volunteers who simply provide support in the form of routing people to the right manual pages has value - both for novice participants who need to gain a better understanding of the project and - of course - for the people who need the support. ---- More from Dan. Thanks again. I don't think that I need to address the points. I agree that my time is my own to spend. :) ---- Another post from Dan: > Advising? Not in my reading. Regardless.. Perhaps you read too much > into what was said. Nope. I've been providing consulting to Bacula Systems for over a month now. I don't think that I need to address the remaining points. ---- Jon Pounder writes: ... > I am on numerous mailing lists and no other software project has > the amount of discussion about 3rd party organizations and image, > and marketing and so on that this list does. You may have a different experience than mine here. The Joomla, MySQL, Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL and many other lists have had much larger discussions around these topics (and fairly regularly as well.) > The fact is, if something is technically solid people will use it and > help out, but if the information is spread around all sorts of different > places it just gets diluted and impossible to find. Technical merit matters, but it is not the entire piece of cake. As a BSD and PostgreSQL user, Dan may have a few opinions on this matter. :) As for dilution of information, I agree. Most of the content distributed via Identi.ca and Twitter will be either personal in nature or will point people to the canonical resources (which need polishing, some of which I've started poking at.) ... skipping the rest, esp. the lurking holy war about the proper setting for reply-to: ... ---- David posted, mostly in agreement with Dan on the point about it being my own time. ---- David posted again, correcting Dan about my engagement with Bacula Systems. ---- Dan posts with a bit of support. Thanks! No material points to address. ---- Dan continues the thread about my relationship with Bacula Systems. Just so that we are all clear. Bacula Systems pays me to give them advice on community and Free Software/Open Source strategy. I do about ten hours of work a week for them on this topic. The work that I do around Bacula and Bacula Systems is a mix of paid work that Bacula Systems asks me to do (often on my recommendation) and unpaid work fixing small things. The paid work consists of things like planning out ways to have better relationships with the projects that Bacula relies on. The unpaid work has consisted of things like setting up the @bacula twitter account, poking Zmanda with a stick for being shifty about the licensing of their Amanda Enterprise product and bits of gardening on http://wiki.bacula.org ---- Dan's chimed in a few more times, but I think that I've gotten most of the points raised. -- Cheers! --zak ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now & Save for Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media. Velocity features a full day of expert-led, hands-on workshops and two days of sessions from industry leaders in dedicated Performance & Operations tracks. Use code vel09scf and Save an extra 15% before 5/3. http://p.sf.net/sfu/velocityconf _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
