On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Lally Singh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [snipping to keep it short] > [ for everyone who's tired of reading these -- sorry. the community's > easily as (actually, more) important than the hardware product itself. > debates like this are as important (imho) as those debating how much > RAM the device has or what cell frequencies should be enabled. ] > > I abbreviate here for brevity, not to ignore any points you've mentioned. > > > On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:25 PM, Kevin Dean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Perhaps you allude to this, and if so, I agree. If not, then I ask you > > to tak a step back and recognize the varied and diverse reasons that > > people value Free Software. > > I agree. The self-motivated, ready-to-go, already-commited ones > aren't the ones I worry about. It's everyone else. Two groups come > to mind: 1. The beginners who would be contributors. 2. The coders > who are looking for a project to work on. A honey-vs-vinegar > approach would help in both areas. > > > > The first day I installed Debian GNU/Linux I was told "Read the > > fucking manual". Back then, they weren't nice enough to abreviate it > > for me. :) > > Responding to such a request like this: > RTFM: <url of documentation> > The old RTFM comment goes back to the older unix days, when you had > good printed documentation, but no google. It's fair to assume that > people would look for documentation before asking... They already > searched plenty to find the mailing list! > > > > Every person told RTFM is a person being told to be responsible for > > themselves. Where you see it inspiring a developer to avoid I project, > > I see it inspiring a hacker to start hacking. > > People still choose which projects to spend their time on, as we're > really competing with other projects for contributors. It helps not > to treat them as spoiled, lazy children. > > > > Again, I don't disagree with you here on principal, but I do question > > the logic being asserted - OpenMoko is the ONLY platform advocating > > use freedom and control so all of the evidence we have on one side or > > the other is questionable at best. > > Others have pushed conceptual products (in this case, freedom) vs > traditional functionality before. E.g. OpenBSD's cryptographic > freedom (hence) and security as a cultural decision. As they don't > bring (initially) any new functionality to the table at start, we > *have* to recruit heavily to build a community. The ones who'd come > in for selfish reasons don't see anything for them until someone else > has made the system useful. The few exceptions are folks who need > specific, easy-to-implement features easily built atop the existing, > raw, openmoko stack. IMHO, not too many by itself. > > It's like a compound interest equation for a savings account. The > initial amount put in is how many people believed in the original > ideals of the project (remember the account starts at zero, so we only > have ideals to start with). What they put in builds interest --- the > results of their work interests more people. Those people's > contributions (even if it's just evangelizing) adds onto the balance > in the account --- building interest themselves. The cycle continues > forward. > > Maybe that metaphor made more sense in my head than out loud. > > But, everyone's got their buy-in point. The amount of work required > to make the device useful/interesting for them. More work than that, > and they're not interested. Any coder will tell you that they spend > as much time going through documentation and other people's source as > they do writing your own. That's where the community comes in: if > it's easy to get help, the amount of work spent looking up > documentation/help reduces, and we have more developers who were just > waiting for the project to hit their buy-in point. Open source > projects charge a price in hours worked, not dollars. Never pretend > that the former isn't easily worth as much as the latter. > > -- > > H. Lally Singh > Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science > Virginia Tech > > > > _______________________________________________ > OpenMoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community >
_______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community