Scott Balneaves wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 11:29:37AM +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
>
>> It's a little frustrating to have people complain on their blog about how
>> bad a wiki is, but yet not actually take the five minutes to correct it or
>> even draw attention to the problem in the community. However, I know
>> the real developers have much greater frustrations. I have attempted to
>> clarify the issues.
>
Actually, it takes more then five minutes to edit a wiki. Especially if
you have never done it before. This is one of my main issues - it takes
too much time for a *casual* contributor to update the wiki. First there
is the problem on which wiki, as discussed in another post on this list,
then there is the learning curve towards the wiki.
Maybe you are a full time developer / contributor to Edubuntu or Ubuntu
and you are familiar with all of its tools. Other people are just
chipping in occasionally, and maybe doing that on many different
software projects. The difference adding some documentation to Moodle
and Edubuntu and Postfix is huge! (and I use those + PHP and qmail-ldap
and openldap and amavis and linux and gnu and clamav and apache (1 and
2) and ruby and rails and plugins and open office and and and).
Try thinking as a not so experienced developer. And try thinking why
these people complain about stuff instead of contributing. If it was
really all that simple, would people still choose to complain instead of
contributing?
> To be expected, however. I'm beginning to beleive that Free Software itself
> is
> an unworkable concept. When I started getting involved (back in 1985 or so),
> there was a tacit understanding that I was here to solve my problems, and
> *you*
> were here to solve *your* problems, and wouldn't it be *cool* if we both
> worked
> *together*, and hey look at what we did!
I started using Free Software in 1994 or so. I wrote open source
software (that only I use but that makes it no less). I contributed (to
the good or bad) on many mailing lists. Just google my name with quotes
and you'll see. But I am not calling myself a developer, out of respect
for those who struggle (both the fun struggle and the frustrating
struggle) to make such great software that I use every day and every
night and on which 100% of my income is based.
Even with that amount of experience - as said, no developer but
certainly not a newbie - does not make it possible for me to *quickly*
change an error in documentation or one line in the software.
For additions to the software I might have to install and learn to use:
git, cvs, svn, bzr, to name a few. I might have to make various accounts
on various sites, sometimes more then one account for the same
'product'. I might have to download a tarball, make changes, do a diff
with some options, and send it back to a mailing list. And so on and so
on. It's very complicated for someone who spends only now and then on
developing software or improving docs. (I am not even talking about to
contribute succesfully to the overall range of free software projects,
that one needs to know C, C++, Ruby, PHP, Guile, JAVA, Javascript, etc
etc etc.)
Compare it to uploading a photo on flickr. It's very easy. Everyone
understands the interface (or at least can learn very quickly).
>
> Now, the vast majority of people feel that filing a 1 line bug report ("IT
> DONT
> WORK WHY WONT YOU GUZ FIX IT LOL!!!111one") is the limit of their need for
> involvement. After all, it's *somebody else's* job to make all this stuff
> work, right?
>
> </rant>
Yes there are many people nowadays who just fill in bug reports the way
you describe. Go check my homepage on launchpad, bug department
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/~acesuares). Take a look at the bugs I
submitted and if they fall under your description. Look at the number of
bugs that are still in 'New' or 'Confimed'. Some of them are years old.
What I try to say that the people who do more then just 'bitching on
bugs', people that really take an effort to describe a bug, are put off
by the reaction to those bugs. Some of them are never picked up. Some of
them are just plainly told to go to a totally different site (for
instance 'upstream' or bugzilla or whatever).
I can tell you from my own experience that filing bugs is NOT very
rewarding. I joined bugsquad for a while but got hopelessly lost on
discussions, rules, wiki pages and so on. I see that bugsquad is really
trying hard to improve things, and the hug days are a good thing for
team spirit, but it's still a long way from raking in that casual
developers and contributors.
{this bit moved around, sorry}
> Also extremely frustrating for a developer who has 84 pages of LTSP
> documentation who keeps asking for someone to help him package it,
> but keeps
> only hearing the "sounds of silence".
As a casual developer, and contributor, I would really like to help you
on that. Because it *is* my problem that the documentation is messy.
But I wouldn't know where to start; I can not estimate the time it would
take. A day? it sounds easy, 'package it', but is it easy??. A week? A
day per month for the next 12 months?
All I wanted was to get firefox to work as local app and browse the
internet with it. I never compare Free Software to the other kind, for
obvious reasons. I don't expect everything to work. I *want* to
contribute. But it is - even for me with LOTS of Free Software
experience - not something to just do between lunch and noon.
So if I can help you on 'packaging' the docs that you have, I am
volunteering right now and right here. If you can give me a pretty
brainless description of what I need to do in some simple steps. If you
can't do that, then there you found the point I am trying to make.
Cheers,
ace
>
> Cheers,
> Scott
>
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