[Mageia-discuss] Habemus logo

Romain d'Alverny rdalverny at gmail.com
Thu Dec 9 10:57:55 CET 2010


On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 00:55, Hoyt Duff <hoytduff at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you are overburdened and need help, you should ask for help:
> there is a community out here.

And as we have started setting up teams (not all of them yet) for
one/two months, we're starting to distribute the work, to the pace we
can delegate and coordinate that. It takes time.

> You, however, feel somehow offended and defensive at my participation.
> That approach generally fails to foster wider community participation
> over time and inhibits the free exchange of ideas.

I understand misc' reaction as well. As wobo said, he's been quite
very busy from day 1 and we've been several in this case. It may not
look like it, but keeping a weekly meeting + public update is a kind
of a struggle (but as well because we are eager to see the whole thing
start; in the end,

You expressed your point of view and although I'm sure it's not, it
can be understood as free criticism. Again, it's a matter of
perception.

Now, having slept over it, here's a grain of salt to my previous post
(not a contradiction, rather a complement). It's more general than
specific to this logo matter.

Mageia won't happen/grow/succeed without a cohesive lot of committed
people. It is a community thing. It's not the founding members + a few
versus all the rest; it's not an organisation versus all the other
people. It's a whole. Its governance has been designed so that the
very control of the project/association will go to those that will
have been recognized as the best ones for that job. Wobo said it, it's
a 2-way thing.

We don't expect this community to be made of passers-by. There will
be; but we expect more of/from people that do care to the point they
will take the time to listen, understand, discuss, draft, experiment,
fail, start over, etc. to provide something more, something better to
the project, as a whole (so that excludes, of course, harsh, non
constructive criticism; but that will happen, we just have to have a
way to manage it).

So, expecting this from people, and for them to do this, is hard,
sometimes very hard. It may sound a bit "elitist", it is, but in a
good way. Because we crave people to join to coordinate and build this
thing carefully. And that takes a lot. But that's great.

That's great provided that it is good/rewarding to work/collaborate
together through this - no one wants to participate in something that
does not make one a better person. That it makes us able to deliver,
not only great technology but a good attitude about creation, design,
collaboration, production, delivery. That it makes us all not only
grow as a community, but as individuals as well, within our own other
fields.

So indeed, again, as a default, we expect the core community to grow
out of very committed, spontaneous, kind, patient and friendly people;
skilled as well of course, but especially eager to learn more/better
from each other to build more/better.

Ok, it may sound as "we won't recruit/encourage anyone to join, they
just have to prove themselves"; but that's not that: as I said _it is
a grain of salt_. We do, we have to encourage people to join for good
reasons (that's even the very first big thing the marketing team has
as a target), contributors first. We hope Mageia as we exposed it and
managed it to this day is a good set of great reasons.

That's how/where we're learning at this time. That's why this
postmortem is crucial (and that we expect to do one after each
significant release/action). For it to work, we've go to accept to
listen to open point of views, even harsh ones - that does not prevent
us to defend our own points. We all have to take these from a distance
to better understand the whole picture.

In this, your point of view is very valuable as well as others
(provided the language/timezone/whatever barriers, let's do it quietly
and carefully).

Cheers,

Romain


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