Paulo,
Rob also clarified what I mean by people speaking for themselves
when he said this earlier:
"For example, I have given such presentations before.
I just say that I am, "Rob Weir, a Committer on the
Apache OpenOffice project". I think several of us
have done this as well.
If someone is not a Committer yet, they could identify
themselves a "Contributor" or "Developer" or "Translator"
or "Volunteer" or something like that.
Taking about the project is fine. Calling for new volunteers
is good as well."
It is important that no one appear to be speaking as an
official representative of the ASF or of the Apache OpenOffice
project.
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weir [mailto:robw...@apache.org]
Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2012 18:06
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Dealing with a large and diverse project - Native Languages and
project teams
On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Paulo de Souza Lima
<paulo.s.l...@varekai.org> wrote:
> 2012/5/20 Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org>
[ ... ]
>> Can do that? Of course we are not ASF representatives, but may we talk
>> about
>> the project?
>> <orcnote>
>> Of course. Anyone can talk about the project, so long as it is unofficial
>> and people are speaking for themselves.
>> </orcnote>
>>
>>
> Oooops. I don't know exactly what you mean "speaking for themselves". Do
> you mean if it has worth to ASF/AOO good for all, if doesn't , people
> should take care of themselves?
>
Two kinds of statements: facts and opinions.
Stating the facts is simple and uncontroversial (usually):
-- the AOO project was started in June 2011
-- Our most recent release is 3.4
-- We support Linux 32 and 64 bit
-- We have translations for 15 languages
-- We have X committers
When you deal with opinions, it gets trickier:
-- The next version of AOO will be called version 4.0 and will have
the following features
-- AOO is better than Project Foo because....
-- AOO will evolve to better meet enterprise requirements
As you see, many such statements are "future looking". None of us
can say whether they will be true or not. And none of us should
obligate the project to deliver a particular feature.
But you can say, for example, something like: "From what I have read
on the mailing list, it looks like we have volunteers interested in
contributing Norwegian and Hebrew translations for the next release",
or "Current discussions point to a 3.4.1 maintenance release in a
couple of months" or "IMHO, I prefer AOO over Project Foo because X, Y
and Z".
"Speaking for yourself" means that when you are stating an opinion,
that you "own" the opinion and say that it is yours.
-Rob
[ ... ]
