On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 11:32 +0530, Gaurav Paliwal wrote: > > > foss.in tried to create a caste structure in the Indian foss > > community. > > > It created a lot of trouble, but fortunately it failed. It's > > proprietor > > > has finally realised that no sensible person will buy his goods and > > has > > > retired and shut down his circus. > > > > > > > I can't comment on this as I never attended any of the foss.in event. > > neither have I > > The > > previous point that I made "This is to tell you what foss.in has > > achieved" > > was based on this : > > http://www.slideshare.net/aanjhan/keynote-at-fossin-2010. > > what does this prove? The author of this was not introduced to foss by > foss.in - he was introduced by Chennai LUG. The proprietor of foss.in > has a theory that LUGs are irrelevant, mailing lists are irrelevant and > any contribution other than code is 'low lying fruit' and not worthy of > mention. That is why he has shut down the Bangalore LUG, made all his > mailing lists non-functional. > > The reason why foss is growing is that unlike the proprietary software > process, foss does not distinguish between contributors and users. Every > contributor is a user and every user contributes in some way or the > other - maybe with documentation, translation, code, bug reports, > feature requests, howtos, tutorials, asking questions on mailing lists > and IRC, providing answers to the questions and, most important - > advocacy, recruiting new users and training those users by conducting > seminars, workshops and exhibtions. And by this process the community is > developed and the application is developed. And the most important > component is USERS. Where would firefox be without it's millions of > users? > > The author claims that foss.in has produced a couple of Gsoc students. > Did it? Where do the Gsoc students come from? who introduced them to > foss in the first place? You will find that the majority of Gsoc > students were introduced to foss by the LUGs, FSUGs and other opensource > and free software groups - as USERS in the first place. Kerala and > Tamilnadu have produced the majority of them - because the LUGs are very > active at the grass root level. I can predict that the NCR will produce > many of these because of the activities of this LUG and it's members. > > Any attempt to separate developers from users is anti foss. Yes, foss.in > has achieved something - it has smashed the Bangalore foss community > which was one of the most vibrant in India. Nothing more - and the fact > that it is now defunct shows it's relevance. > I think what tuxmaniac is emphasising on is how individuals have grown and evolved due to the FOSS community and the spirit of collaboration. After all, FOSS is a meritocracy. All the meetups, all unconferences, conferences, LUGs, user groups, everything are platforms for the community to come together to collaborate. FOSS.in was one such platform. It was not the only platform. It cannot do everything, nor was it supposed to. Even I havent been to any FOSS.in, so would stay away from judging FOSS.in; but even if FOSS.in was the next best thing to sliced bread, it could not have been the only solution to nurturing communities and promoting FOSS. One thing that FOSS.in did contribute was popularize: "Talk is cheap, Show me the code". But, then, that was Linus. > -- > regards > KG > http://lawgon.livejournal.com > Coimbatore LUG rox > http://ilugcbe.techstud.org/ > > -- > l...@iitd - http://tinyurl.com/ycueutm > -- l...@iitd - http://tinyurl.com/ycueutm
