On 7/20/07, Jeff Rush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Mathew Davis wrote: > > And I don't understand why we can't have both. I really don't see the > problem so if someone could explain why not having a forum would be > advantageous and not just personal preferance I am all ears, because I > could list a lot of reasons why forums could be advantageous. I appreciate your viewpoint but here are a few reasons: 1. Our community is small -- spreading the discussions thinly before we have reached critical mass will dilute the synergy. We are just now starting to come together as a community, and I think we even have too many mailing lists as it is (not always clear on which one to discuss X).
The community is artificially kept small by not providing a place for non-developers to gather. I hate mailing lists and I only signed up on this one because I'm desperate for OpenMoko information. Hundreds of other people probably aren't quite as desperate or hate mailing lists even more but they would have signed up at a forum. 2. The OpenMoko team at FIC are spread _very_ thin and lack the
time/resources to research and establish a forum themselves. They were overloaded just getting a basic storefront up. I don't understand why a company the size of FIC isn't providing more logistics support to them, so they can focus on the hardware/software but that's the way it is today. 3. Because of #2 and the fact this is the world of free/open, groups are welcome to establish a forum someplace and announce it here. In fact no one can stop it. Then instead of debating it you apply the governance principle of open source, in that if you build it will they come. If so, you were right. If not, you were wrong. A very objective approach.
We need a central official forum. We've got an official mailing list, wiki and chat. If efforts are not centralized, energy is wasted on answering the same questions and discussing the same stuff parallel at three places. The community probably isn't strong enough for THAT (yet).
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