On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 6:00 PM, Paulo de Souza Lima <paulo.s.l...@varekai.org> wrote: > 2012/5/20 Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> > >> Please Paolo, >> >> What does this refer to: >> >> "Do you need to fill a form when you decide to help a friend >> or someone unknown? Most of people don't think they need. >> So, some of us will submit their requests for contributors. >> Some will not." >> >> I have no idea how this relates to the Apache OpenOffice project and those >> communities that adopt, share and advocate use of the software. >> >> > Ok. Let me try to explain again. Maybe the language barrier could be making > me diffiicult to do that. > > 1- When OpenOffice.org were living, we had a great and promising community > in Brazil. > 2 - In that time, we had not to fill any kind of form to contribute and to > be accepted as a contributor. Everyone was watching what we were doing and > that was enough. > 3 - I don't know if you are aware about what has happened to brOffice.org > NGO. It's a long and disgusting story I could tell you in another > opportunity. But that divided our community in those who had commercial > interests in brazilian market and those who contributed freely and had > their work stolen, when TDF was formed. > 4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called > a "contributor" should fill a agreement request in order to be > "recognized". So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people > who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign > organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of "channels", > many of them obscured. > 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One > of them became a "brazilian" member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when > brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them > didn't vote for him. > 6 - Facing all those issues, many of us got out. Some have gone to take > care of their own lives. Some were seeking some other project to contribute > for. We are the remains of those who were seeking a project to contribute > for. > 7 - Some of us are not intending to fill a form in order to became a > "contributor". They don't think it's necessary, and I don't think either. > despite of that they continue to do a great job marketing AOO, without your > knowledge. You don't know them, but we, brazilians, certainly do. > 8 - This discussion was already made in TDF mailing lists, without success > for us. > 9 - I don't want to bring a polemic issue like that here, because I know > you would ask more and more about it, and some answers cannot be exactly > what you want to see. > 10 - I am tired of discussing this issue. I had a wearing discussion with > TDF BoD once and, if brazilian people don't want to speak for themselves, > I'll be quiet also, because I am telling you what is/was happening, but I > am not a spokesman for anyone. > > And Rob... There's no "abstract vollunteers" up here. There are vollunteers > you don't know and who are doing a great job, despite the fact you don't > know them. >
The issues are abstract until you say person X wants to do Y and cannot do it because of Z. Fill in X, Y and Z and then we have a problem we can solve. Something else to note: There are different levels of participation for volunteers in an Apache project. One can be a contributor/developers without signing the ICLA and without doing any other paper work. A contributor can participate in any of our mailing lists, sign up for a wiki account (on MWiki and Confluence) can create a Bugzilla account, can enter translations in Pootle, can even fix bugs and submit patches. So there is a lot that they can do without signing the ICLA. However, to get direct commit access to the source repository, used for the source code and the website, you need to be voted in as a Committer and sign the ICLA. There are a few other permissions that we only give to Committers, like login rights for Pootle, admin access to servers, etc. So there should not a lot of bureaucracy needed for volunteers to be active with the project. But if I am wrong (and I might be) then the best way to argue that point is with a specific example. -Rob > > > >> - Dennis >> > > Regards. > > -- > Paulo de Souza Lima > http://almalivre.wordpress.com > Curitiba - PR > Linux User #432358 > Ubuntu User #28729
