Money's not a big issue for me and hosting is pretty cheap. Sometimes though it is a stumbling block for smart young minds with a limited beer budget and causes good projects to needlessly cease operations.
My concern is seeing other similar projects take off while this one appears to be slowly losing interest from its core supporters. This may a totally wrong assumption based solely on seeing people set up Habari-based sites a year or so back, all excited, and then letting them sit unchanged since then, as they move onto another tech challenge. Lots of "I love Habari but now I'm running with Drupal or Concrete5, or building a Mars lander in my basement". Then there is the gap in postings here in Google Groups and general lack of noob questions. 500 odd members for a 5 year project? I just think there is a missing market between someone like me and your current user base and I'd like to somehow kickstart it into action before it's too late. Maybe I'm way off base here and this is just natural selection at work, but I've often seen where the melding of totally different skill sets creates a stronger organization. I've also seen where inflexible originators refuse to loosen their grip as they alienate even their strongest supporters. Right now, I'd just like to hear what direction people hope to see Habari going in and what they see as non-tech issues that need improvement. Maybe I'm not needed at all if I'm wrong in my assessment. Maybe just talking about it will fix things. Maybe the volunteer base has gotten so small that it's too much for them to keep up? If I didn't get the glowing testimonial and see a site in active vibrant use, I think I would have gone elsewhere based on a few fixable shortfalls. It would just be a shame if a growing base was needlessly lost by not trying to help. On Sunday, December 30, 2012 7:48:43 PM UTC-5, Les Henderson wrote: > > I was put onto Habari by a big fan user and thought I'd try to get it > running because I like to support what might be perceived to be underdogs. > After dickering with it a bit from the perspective of a person who doesn't > hold a degree in Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence I have to note > that I see opportunities for improvement, not of the program but the way it > is promoted and supported. > > I don't say this to be critical but rather that I am excited about seeing > an underutilized opportunity. I love Open Source and free things but > realize that they require a lot of devotional free labour and kind > contributions to keep alive. I've run a free resource for a decade and it's > cost me tens of thousands in unwanted legal fees and more again for my time. > > Presently I find the documentation way over the heads of even someone like > myself who can usually figure things out, given enough time. I wonder if > the core group of supporters would be horribly distraught if I arranged to > organize and fund a more user friendly users group website that I'd have to > fund with Adsense? > > Then I could approach it from a noob's perspective and hopefully get more > people on board as users, rather than let it languish and fade away, > something I fear I see happening. I'm open to ideas and discussions and > really mean no unintended offence. > > Anyway, I get a lot of foolish brainstorms about adoption when I see > things I like that are suffering. We have several dogs and cats that came > as strays. Ha. > > > > > -- To post to this group, send email to habari-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to habari-users-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-users
