On Sunday, 13 September 2020 23:57:38 CEST Richard Braun wrote: > > You seem to operate from the principle that contributors "offer" their > work, as if they weren't doing it for themselves in the first place.
Actually, some people do volunteer their time/work/effort not because they will get anything out of it, but because they feel it is the right thing to do. Hence the people who ask senior members of the Free Software community what they should be working on. Why would they do that if they were "doing it for themselves in the first place"? > You want your name in a project you like, you want social recognition, > then do good work. In my situation I didn't care about my "name in a project": I don't even remember initiating the discussion that led to any contribution; I merely felt that in that community, I had useful expertise and it would help a project I care about. Having said that, I did indeed get the impression, as you have given above, that potential contributors to that project were perceived as people who somehow wanted to share in all the glory. I think that says a great deal about the maintainers, but I guess you don't, so we will obviously have to disagree about that. [...] > I didn't mean to close down discussion, that's another instance of you > misunderstanding. Of course it is all about me again. I thought you declared the actual list as being only for "archiving purposes", but I am sure you meant something completely different. [...] > You wrote in your initial message [3] that : "One gets the impression that > unless someone is either a top-level operating system architect and/or > willing to burn themselves out fixing up huge amounts of existing code > or writing new code in precisely the way envisaged by others who > nevertheless aren't going to be writing any themselves, then new > contributions are not really welcome". I apologise if I gave the impression that you and others in this project actively seek to have people burn themselves out over attempting to contribute to the project. However, I stand by my observation that due to the scale and nature of some of the tasks that would be faced by people volunteering for this project, combined with the demands made of them, people are very much at risk of burning out pursuing those activities. And I absolutely believe that people should be aware of that, despite your belief that it seemingly isn't a problem, or is one that maybe only affects other people or other projects. I find it fascinating that of all the things I initially wrote, you have zoomed right into this and framed it as me trying to turn potential contributors away. I think those people should simply review the list archives and decide for themselves whether they would be happy and productive contributors to this project. If they think so and end up being so, then I don't think anyone has any reason to be aggrieved, do they? Paul
