Le 2015-03-13 19:25, Neil McGovern a écrit :
On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 09:55:01AM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
Hi,
You are probably familiar with SWOT analysis
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis).
From your perspective, what are Debian's main strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats?
Indeed, though I'm not the biggest fan of SWOT. It's often misused,
and
doesn't actually solve any issues on its own for strategic
thinking.[0]
A couple of common errors are to create a SWOT on its own, or to
create
a SWOT by yourself. The presence of one doesn't actually solve
anything,
or indeed identify a way to improve. Secondly, simply having one
person's view on what should go in a box misses out the point of it -
to
engage and try and bring a common understanding of where we need to
go.
However, I've answered some of the above in a interview for the
publicity team, so look out for that. I wouldn't want to spoil the
work that they've put in :)
I think that lucas wanted us to share our vision on Debian and SWOT as
a tool to achieve that. Not more. I agree that it can be misused and is
not suitable for every purpose but we are not going to build a strategy
based on candidates' answers. Furthermore, interviews address lucas'
question only partially.
I don't pretend to be exhaustive here but I've tried to list the ones
that look important (to me):
Strengths:
- History of the project: We've been doing this for over two decades
now.
We have accumulated a lot of experience and showed that our work is
relevant to the Free Software and Open Source community.
- Strong and large community: We have thousands of contributors and
millions
of users.
- Largest number of derivatives based on Debian, comparing to other
popular
distributions.
- Largest package repositories
- Known for its philosophy of technical excellence and commitment to
free
software.
- Independence
Weaknesses:
- Lack of manpower in some areas
- Generally, no interest of contributors for non-technical tasks
- Not easy to get started
- Complex processes (or sometimes, not well known)
- No roadmap
- Financial status not clear: We have money but we don't spend it. I
guess
I'll be more verbose on this subject when replying about the question
on
fundraising.
Threats:
- "Free" (no fee) services: People externalized some part of their
computation
and started relying more on more on online services for their daily
tasks
(mails, calendars, storage, text editors, ...).
- Containers as a solution to deploy applications and services.
- Non-free hardware more and more common. Even our CPUs require a
microcode
that we are invited update blindly!
- Complexity of new software stacks: Who's really able to debug his
Gnome
installation and understand all dbus-triggered stuff? It became so
much
complex that even power users have troubles finding answers. And this
is
not an isolated example.
Opportunities:
- Cloud services
- Potential new contributors from Arabic-speaking countries
- Post-Snowden era
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