jdd wrote: > [...] > my question was more "why are there so little people..." > (contributors on this list, authors of wiki pages...)
I can't speak for others but maybe they have similar "problems"... a) I have a full-time job and only little spare time. b) Taking responsibility for one sub-project is time-consuming, even if it's only the maintenance of a web page. Things change frequently at the moment (as I am authoring a German Kernel Howto, I know what I am talking about ;-). c) I am active in other projects and/or on other mailing lists (e.g. suse-linux). d) The communication via wiki or a forum is not very efficient for development purpose (it's great for the end-user because he can find lots of information there). Mailing lists are much better for a development community because everybody receives everything without having to scan lots of web pages or forum posts etc. which is very time-consuming. e) This mailing list is not very efficient either. There are too many subjects that belong to suse-linux-e or suse-linux or that are completely off topic. Furthermore, the quoting of mails is sometimes very awful which makes it difficult to follow threads. f) (this is a bit more general) The whole opensuse project lacks from my point of view a clear thread - things are scattered around, there are lots of rumours, maybe people just don't know where to start. When I have to include 17 repositories just to get a fully functional distribution and I don't know much about the authors (whom shall I trust?) and only maybe half of the packages can be updated via YOU (those officially maintained by SuSE), well, I consider this as being not very attractive. Things should be a bit more centralised. g) There is a lack of communication between SuSE and the community. Just as a very simple example: the feedback form on SuSE's web site has been like a big black hole for years now... Maybe some feedback was included in the next distribution, some feedback was rejected (of course), but you never got any direct response. Furthermore, I have asked many times for information concerning the SuSE kernel patches (it's horrible to read through all the patches just to get an impression what's going on, they are not very well documented!), or other more technical stuff related to e.g. HAL. I did not get this information, or it was only by private email from a SuSE employee (thanks a lot for all the unofficial support over the years!). h) (this is my personal point of view) There have been certain developments in SuSE Linux over the last couple of years that did actually detract me a bit from SuSE Linux. I am an experienced Unix/Linux user, but SuSE put the focus very much on new Linux users and especially people coming from Windows. This brought us many "features" that were *not* ready for the end-user at release time (e.g. resmgr, subfs, suseplugger, ...) and some obscure kernel patches and all of this caused a lot of trouble (I have experienced many problems with the IDE barrier patches in the default kernels of 8.0 and 8.1). When asked about the increasing instability of SuSE Linux, I got the answer from SuSE that "the market requests such things". At that point I had to realize that I am maybe no longer part of the target group of SuSE. Considering my colleagues and friends, many experienced Linux users are no longer using SuSE. Maybe others have made different experiences, but from my point of view this is quite an important indication. i) ... (to be continued) Just to make my point clear: this email is not meant to upset anybody or to disregard what has been achieved so far (neither the work of SuSE nor the work of the opensuse community). But there are really things to be improved, and I have good arguments for all that it said above (people from the suse-linux mailing list might know me very well). I have been using SuSE since version 4.x and I have experience with lots of other distributions (e.g. our clusters here in UK are running on RedHat and RedHat Enterprise, some clients on Fedora, clusters in other offices are running Fedora Core 3) as well as commcercial Unices like SGI IRIX or HP-UX. Maybe I don't have much time to contribute as an "active" member to opensuse, but I keep an eye on all the developments and sometimes I feel it's time to express my opinion... ;-) With best regards from London, Thomas --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
