Alexander Larsson wrote: > Also, there is all this talk about "Management" with I just don't > understand. Redhat is a company with managers, but Fedora is about free > software development. People are supposed to work on it because they > like to, to scratch itches, to learn stuff, to have fun. If all you want > is to have a Redhat fix bugs for you the best way do to that is to spend > money on Redhat Enterprise Linux, that means we'll get more paid > developers and will be able to fix more bugs (in fedora too, fedora is > what will become the next RHEL version) You've read the leadership draft document right? Now talking about micro-management of developer time maybe isn't something productive to talk about (unless i knew who your manager was and had a way to bribe them into telling you to do exactly what i wanted partitioned into 15 minute blocks of time). But certainly there is room to talk about Red Hat's need to manage in broad strokes, the large human capital resources represented not only in red hat employees, but also the enthusiastic but maybe somewhat out-of-touch volunteers. This is not going to be a very successful community experiment, if Red Hat contains full control of the high level policy and decision making that directs the distro...but doesn't do a very good job of communicating and directing volunteers. Everyone involved in a process gets paid in different ways. Volunteers, get paid either through control to shape the direction of the project or through access to information, and both forms of metaphysical volunteer payment seems to be lost in the mail when it comes to the Fedora project. Personally I'd say Red Hat misjudged the cost of sending out those checks, and didn't spend enough money on stamps. Or dropping the cutesy allegory... I don't think Red Hat has allocated enough internal resources aimed directly at the problem of building and managing the volunteer community aspects of the project. A few very motivated and extremely technically knowledgable people have broken through the barren wastelands of communication separating the nation-states of Fedora users and Fedora developers, but I wouldn't call that sort of vision quest something a majority of volunteers are skilled enough to do. There is a need here to manage aspects of communication with volunteers, to take the day-to-day burden of dealing with common volunteer/developer communication off the shoulders of the developers. And I'm not talking about individual developer time, I'm talking about someone specifically whose job it is to act as a volunteer coordinator. If the Fedora project, as a community project, is really important to Red Hat corporate, they will allocate manhours specifically to address the horrible task of figuring out how to recruit and retain community volunteer interest in a project whose overall goals are set not by community..but by Red Hat. If Red Hat does tap someone to be a volunteer coordinator, and they make the mistake of not hiring someone with training and experience dealing with volunteer husbandry in the brick and mortar world, might I suggest they look at the first 18 or so pages of this volunteer management handbook pdf: http://tinyurl.com/33ban The section outlining on how to start off on the wrong foot, in terms of volunteer organization..reads like a history of the Fedora project. Read the first 18 pages or so and grimace. Actually...everyone involved in Fedora development should read the first 18 or so pages of that volunteer workbook. The majority of the pdf, concerns itself with template tools as example tools to address many of the issues raised in the first 18 or so summary pages. In the darker moments of my day (when I'm calibrating optical beam paths in the dead of night) i sometimes wonder what exactly is the point of opening this process up to the 'community.' Is it all about the binary bits? Or is the real potential value not in the bits at all but in the building of a vibrant community process, where an average fedora user (who lets be honest is going to be less technically inclined than users of some of the more prominent community development model distros) can learn how to contribute. People just wandering through, scratching their own itch, in my mind, isn't a really useful definition of community...its sort of like calling the mass of people standing in line at the DMV a community. Or too but it another way, idle technical proficient manpower at this point is probably in short supply, since anyone who has an itch to scratch already has a sourceforge project listing for some sort of mp3 playing something or other. Fedora either has to tap into existing volunteer manpower that is being used for other things by offering those people something of value inherent in the fedora contribution process, or by developing and nurturing less technically inclined user so that they can become active contributors. -jef"Communities are built through proactive leadership reaching out and building a process by which people feel empowered to be responsible for the project. I'm still very hopeful such a community can be built from the people standing in line at the Fedora's DMV"spaleta
