Hi,
And just another word regarding the terms contributor or contributing.
IMHO these are chosen badly,
Agreed, but this was exhaustively discussed by the website team during
the last upgrade and nothing better was suggested.... That doesn't mean
to say that there isn't a better way, just we haven't found it yet.
Admittedly I haven't participated at the discussion. So, if possible I
would like to reopen it.
IIRC Maarten was involved in that discussion
Well, from what I remember from the 'discussion' is that it was a
compromise. What other term could you think of that describes the wide
group of people that help building OOo, both programming-wise as
marketing-wise? However... (hold on ;) )
Heh, Eric Raymond has a lot to answer for! :) And you are quite right.
However we can't base a flyer on "Come work on OOo and we'll scratch your
itch!" it might create unreasonable expectations. ;) We need to better
articulate the rewards... It's a challenge. Of course OOo is not a Bazaar
model and neither is it a Cathedral builders model. One of OOo's challenges
is to find the middle ground where we're comfortable
Hmmm... I wonder whether we've to articulate the rewards... (hold on ...)
have here is the need for simple marketing procedures
Identify your market
Identify their needs/desires
Identify how we can fill those needs/desires
and tell them.
Please don't forget 'our needs', this is IMHO one of the differences
between open source and may be commercial entities, eventually it is to
everybody's advantage.
Agreed wholeheartedly, however one of the problems I've observed over my time
with OOo is our inability to retain volunteers. Not all our needs are being
met by the community.
I'd like to add another item to the marketing procedures: deliver a good
product. And with product here I mean not only a good office suite, but
deliver good information. Not only listings of features, and advertising
phrases... but deliver a good information architecture that helps
everyone find what he or she needs. That people will get a satisfied
feeling by contributing is not something you can promise. I think most
(if not all) people already instinctively know that by helping (others)
out, or building something together, one can get the rewarding feeling
of doing good. (i wanted to type 'create a better world' ;) ). Telling
it is a product in which people can participate should be enough to
trigger this.
The main problem however is: where to continue? I think that's one of
the main problems, already for a long time. I believe most programmers,
the technical portion of the earth's population, will know by now
OpenOffice.org, and know that it's an open source product, and also know
what open source is. So if those people enjoy OpenOffice.org, I believe
they will all sooner or later think of making it better. On other lists
this is the same, and every now and then you see people introduce
themselves on mailinglist with the question how can I help? Where to
start? And if the main contributors are too busy, some of these e-mails
stay unanswered for a longer while. We would do much better if we shared
this information beforehand.
How? I think the best way is by improving the product pages. If people
see how projects relate to each other, they might better understand how
to help out.
Marketing is a little different because when we get into the sales end of
things we get our satisfaction from outside community when a customer
says: "Wow! this is really great software, thanks for introducing it to me."
That's a blast. We need to get that same sort of blast to people who's only
source of reward is the recognition of their peers.
Hmm... isn't this kind of reward the kind of reward the other OOo
community members can give? E.g. about a year ago, I spend a lot of
time, sadly enough mostly discussing, on the home page. I have felt it
as rewarding being interviewed by Louis. But of course a website is a
very public thing... I'm not sure whether e.g. people from the XML
project will have similar opportunities?
g.
Maarten
--
Maarten Brouwers (murb)
http://www.murb.nl
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