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Postings from February 2007
On Monday 05 February 2007 3:08 pm, chromatic wrote: > On Monday 05 February 2007 13:58, Thomas Fjellstrom wrote: > > On Monday 05 February 2007 2:51 pm, chromatic wrote: > > > I *highly* recommend that non-contributors never tell *volunteers* what > > > they should and shouldn't do. > > > > That won't ever stop it from happening. as annoying as it is, which is > > why I take it as suggestions. get enough suggestions on the same topic, > > and it might just be something to look into. > > I repeat my questions to Nicholas then, and add a request to Be Very > Specific. For all I disagree with Gerard's ideas which started the thread, > he posted a patch without waiting for Magic Code Fairies to do the work for > him. > > I welcome suggestions on how to tell volunteers who've already put > tremendous time and effort into Perl 6 or Pugs or Parrot to: > > 1) work harder > 2) give up their day jobs which provide for their families (or in my case, > my cats) > 3) do something they don't enjoy (PR) instead of development, or > documentation, or testing, or design You can yell at the people /telling/ you to do this. I do often. ;) now most people don't /tell/ you to do anything, at least that hasn't been my experience, most people ask questions and make suggestions, at least ones getting involved in the project I'm a part of. Now going out and asking someone to voulunteer to be the PR Ferry, or asking for people to help work on the actual direction of the project, might be a good idea. The opensource project I work on has a large PR nightmare, people still think its DOS only, and hasn't been for about 6 years. Its something I know needs worked on, but no one seems to be stepping forward to work on it. Which means I might have to do it (god please no...), so I know exactly where you are comming from, but its something that needs done to keep the project alive in the eyes of the community and in the eyes of the rest of the world (which thinks its mostly dead, not unlike perl5 and perl6, yes, many people think both are dead). I want to keep the project alive, and fixing the PR is a good way to bump up support for it. And to fix the PR things need to get done, like making an actual plan for the new version, outlining things that need to get done, announcing openings for "senior developers", and starting a cohesive PR campaign aimed at fixing the misconceptions and advertising the benefits of the project. If these things in "my" project don't get done, it will totally die. Its just a matter of time. Infact, it almost did die a couple years ago. Mainly due to a "Version 5.0" plan that was put in place that totally stalled development on both Version 4 and 5 (limited number of developers). Its not a totally dissimilar situation from what perl is facing. Though perl does have a much bigger user base. which means it'll just take longer to fade away. This is just my oppinion, I'm in no way trying to TELL you what your job is, just pointing out that its a serious problem that may need looked into. > -- c -- Thomas Fjellstrom tfjellstrom@gmail.com