I understand what you mean and what you decided to (let?) do, but I think I have to forget my status of 'silent user' for this one.
Le dimanche 30 avril 2006 à 10:11 +0200, Michael Van Canneyt a écrit : > All the discussion about a Lazarus/FPC foundation can be solved very simple: > > Just start one. There is no need for the foundation to be owned or started > by the FPC/Lazarus development groups. No need to be owned or started by the development groups, maybe. But we are at this point where strategy matters. I mean, we have to consider that such a foundation can (will!) deeply influence fpc and lazarus future. If it's not the case on early times, beware that time will come seeing this 'foundation' acting for this purpose, needing more 'power'. Some open software communities saw their prefered projects and communities sunk or splitted because of pros and cons of creating a foundation, or because of the board composition - especialy when core developers get frustrated by some foundation's evolutions, ideas or objectives. First example in my mind is the Mambo project, when the creation of a foundation caused many core developers to abandon Mambo and to create Joomla. > You, the users, can start a Lazarus/FPC foundation if you feel that the > development > and support of Lazarus/FPC can be advanced by it. I think that a foundation can really be a good thing... if it has a good start, I mean if: * core developers and users understand, before the starting point, what this foundation HAVE TO do and what it CAN or CAN NOT do * we understand that such a foundation can't be a COMMUNITY substitution. It 'only' is a tool to help and promote the projects, fpc and lazarus, the coders, and the 'users'. Is it? * we take care of the composition of the board's members. > The Foundation can do mainly 3 things: > 1. Support users. > 2. Sponsor hardware. > 3. Put bids on rent-a-coder (and similar) for developing new things or fixing > bugs. > The resulting code can be inserted in the main tree if devels agree, or > distributed > as separate patches (which I doubt would be necessary). Other ideas: 4. What about some promotion/advocacy stuffs? For example, Fatir Demirdag talked about pascal "considered as old, incapable and dead language". I think FPC and Lazarus are important projects. Not only for fun or business related stuffs. But people simply DON'T KNOW IT!! 5. For countries like Madagascar, Open Source Softwares have to be important and can really help peoples to learn and use Technology. The creation of a foundation can be the opportunity to push for the use of FPC and Lazarus in these countries. (Can maybe be merged with 4.?) > After all, it is YOU, the users that will benefit from it. The developers > will have > little or no practical benefit from the foundation. Maybe some tasks will be > lifted IMHO, a foundation has to be started IF it can benefit: * the project * the core developers * the users Failing to do so can end on frustrations and/or too divergent objectives. > from their hands, but there will be just as much new tasks. For instance for a > foundation, you are required to do double bookkeeping (at least here in > Belgium). > I'm sure none of the devels wants to do that. It's a practical burden. > > The FPC developers do what they do because they like developing FPC, > and are not interested in the administrative and organisational > burdens that come with managing a foundation (such as bookkeeping). Ok, but we have to keep them into the decision process, into the foundation. So some of them can be part of the board, allways informed and participating in each decisions, but without administrative tasks. > If you start a foundation, I'll be glad to be a 'member of the board' or > whatever > it's called, and act as a liaison between the foundation and the developers. IMHO, we have to know how many members does the board need, and to decide, in xx percent basis, how many core developers with defined role have to be involved. It's obvious that Michael has to be member of the board, but I think that only 1 developer surrounded by 10 'users' can be source of problems. > The ball is in your camp... I think that at least, say 4 weeks, have to be taken before the starting point. Also, it may be helpfull to dedicate a little part of the website to get the community involved: what about polls? with some predefined questions. -- Thierry Andriamirado http://thierry.andriamirado.free.fr _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
