Re: [native-lang] IRC Talk starts now!!

On Sun, 2005-07-17 at 15:30 +0300, Ain Vagula wrote:
> On 7/17/05, Charles-H.Schulz <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 20:55 +0100, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> > > > The intent of OOoAuthors is to attract as much people as
> > > > possible by trying to be appealing to advanced users as well as
> > > > newcomers.
> > >
> > > Uhmm... is that a bad thing? I'd think it'd be good.
> > 
> > Well, it is a bad thing in the sense that you are trying to take people
> > away from OOo, the ".org", the community if which you're supposed to be
> > a representative. It's good to do this in a business context for
> > instance, but not in a community context where we (altogether) are
> > supposed to build a community, not fragment it.
> > >
> 
> It this better to lose people at all? In OOoAuthors they can
> contribute using simple and familiar interface. When they do not have
> such a possibilty, they will just give up.
> Programmers of course dont need such a intermediate buffer, users do.

+1 

Firstly, I doubt many of the OOoAuthors people would actually be working
on the documentation project anyway. Its like claiming the software
industry loses billions to piracy. That assumes that the pirates would
actually buy at those prices if forced to. Some might but I guess a lot
wouldn't.

Perhaps the fundamental question as to why people would want to use
OOoAuthors in preference to the OOo Docs project should be addressed by
the Project Leads. If there is a need and a line of least resistance
people will take that route, particularly volunteers who the manager has
no coersive power to hold. Read some of the stuff Christian posted on
disruptive technologies and Charles Handy on Understanding
Organisations. Its no good complaining about forks if you create the
environment that is likely to result in them. Making sure that the
environment is such that this won't happen is a key aspect of
leadership. Leadership is not the same as coordinating. Its not about
always taking safe options. Managment is the art of making best use of
the available resources in a changing environment. The key resource
available to the community is human and so management of that human
resource is a key issue. Large disruptions and loss of resources or
inefficient use of resources are managment failures, not failures of the
individuals in the community. So first look at the management.

I'm not a member of either the Docs project or OOoAuthors so I have no
particular axe to grind one way or another but I do believe this
specific issue is a wake up call for the way the project is managed,
particlarly given that people are worried by the lack of active
volunteers.

-- 
Ian Lynch <[email protected]>
ZMSL