On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 22:30 +0000, John McCreesh wrote: > On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 17:01 +0100, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: > > In any FOSS community, the community is made of the developpers. The > > one > > who codes is the one who calls the shots. The rest, albeit valuable > > sometimes, has no other way than respecting the developpers' decisions > > or try to convince them they are wrong. There is hence no question of > > separating the community and the developpers. > > > I think I put a slightly different slant on this. I entirely agree that > the open-source communities which work best are the do-ocracies, those > which value people according to what they contribute. By contribute, I > don't just mean posting to a mailing list, which can be just an > ego-trip. I mean people who actually contribute code (if a developer), > translations (N-L), artwork (art project), collateral (on a marketing > list), etc.
What about people who actually get mass take up? Eg someone who goes into a company and persuades them to adopt the product? I guess this is more like sales but since marketing is the nearest we have to selling I'd say that would be a useful contribution and it might not get noticed. Ideally this would get posted to the list but it might not for a variety of reasons. Same is true of people who raise awareness in their place of work. Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of work that goes on that might not be either noticed or understood but if it helps get more users of OOo its of value to the project. > So I like to think of OOo as a community of different projects, each > valuing their contributors according to how they contribute to that > project's aims. I think it is entirely right e.g. for the MP to try and > encourage developers to code what the market wants. > We maybe need some mechanism whereby people gain community points for > doing things, and maybe lose them for just creating noise on lists :-) Thing is the EE thread was actually a serious marketing discussion until it got swamped with "I like EEs so let's keep them". Maybe we need discussion moderation to always keep in mind the relevance to global marketing of the product. If a proposal is made analyse against strengths and weaknesses then come to a conclusion with a recommendation. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
