On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 1:53 AM, Karen Coyle <[email protected]> wrote:
> Brewster has encouraged me to encourage the idea of creating a working
> community around OL -- folks who can participate in making changes and
> fostering sharing.

I don't know who Brewster is, but I agree OL should open up to more
contributors.

> That's all the guidance I have, so I'm assuming that
> we have to do the heavy lifting to make it happen. Can we work together
> on a proposal? I'm willing to do research and writing. Where would you
> like to do this? Wiki? G-Doc? something else?
>
> Are there others that we should include? I could contact library
> programmers who are using the API for covers, etc.

I've been involved with FOSS development communities for many years
now, and also with other community activities  such as a national
Python user's group, volunteer-run tech conferences and more recently
a hackerspace.

To be succesful any community/volunteer effort must be very open and
transparent. A "fishbowl" is a metaphor I've seen used in a project
that succesfully transitioned from closed to open.

With transparency, people can see what is going on and find
opportunities to contribute.

I don't see much transparency in the OL initiatives. Early on when I
got interested in OL I sent a couple tech questions that were simply
ignored. There are some dead mailing list that should be just closed
or clearly marked as frozen archives. There is very little information
for developers, and I see no roadmap anywhere. The mere fact that an
open wiki will be a novelty here is symptom of how closed the project
has been.

I hope you manage to change this.

To start, don't ask "Are there others that we should include?".
Because no one should be excluded, in principle. Everyone should have
access to all the information needed to get involved. A better
question would be "Are there others that we should invite?"

Please forgive me if I sound harsh. English is not my first language.
I want OL to thrive, and it is obvious to me that OL needs to engage
more people.

Best regards,

-- 
Luciano Ramalho / OFICINAS TURING
Twitter: @ramalhoorg

Autor e professor dos cursos:

* Objetos Pythonicos   -->   http://turing.com.br/oopy
* Python para quem sabe Python   -->   http://turing.com.br/ppqsp
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