in-line :- On 07/09/2015 02:57 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: > On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 8:41 PM, pavithran <pavithra...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Here are some points about community problems >> a. Factionalism >> b. Cabalism (or simply Cabals) >> As have been part of both parts do understand that both factions and >> cabals start with good intentions but sometimes later warp beyond >> recognition. >> Next he goes on to say >> >> c. No communication, Mis-communication >> d. Fragmented content with contradictory messages. >> The above two I have also seen time and again as a ‘feature’ of the >> Indian FOSS community at large where most communities in India don’t >> really communicate to other FOSS communities or world at large or are >> pretty bad at things. > > At the time this post was originally circulated on a list I had > reached out to the author with a request to provide a set of examples > which illustrate the problems he perceives. The pair of instances > cited in the post [(a) no calendaring and (b) not enough developer > interest in defect reports] do not seem to add up to the specific > problems that are being drawn. In fact, it is egregious to pass off an > anecdote_of_one as a general perception.
That was just one part of it. What would you say then about issue in wikipedia India where there were two forks? And the issue is not limited to wikipedia alone, for some - it comes to the fore, in others it just below the surface. The problem is it's easy to be shot as the messenger when you say something like that. Also any example or examples can easily be construed to be straw man examples as well. The specific example that I shared with you was for another community but the point is/was these kind of issues are prevalent in most communities. Even if you take calendaring, I doubt that most of the LUGs either have their own calendar or even attempt to reach out to various other LUGs when events happen on some common calendaring system, the same could be said for special interest groups as well. And I wouldn't even go into the sort of moderation some of the communities apply for something basic as mailing lists although it was heartening to see PLUG change its tactics, although somewhat too little, too late :( . > The author has been a participant in various communities over a period > of time. And is well aware that the question of "calendar for FOSS > events" comes up in a cyclical manner. However, it is also somewhat > painfully obvious that no one has taken the time to publish a set of > requirements such a calendar/system would have. That single act (of > 'product management') would have provided the jump-off point for > college students or, similar (recall that PLUG generally organizes the > monthly meetings at SICSR) to consider a prototype implementation. > Having said that, the author also chooses to ignore that across Pune > and other cities, the general purpose (user) groups viz. LUGs and like > are being supplanted by niche/specialized meetups. One can see this > trend in the increasing number of groups being lit up on services like > meetup.com. An oft quoted statement around the FOSS model of software > development is "scratch your own itch". I am somewhat bewildered that > the author has chosen to not consider putting the absence of a > calendar in that context and attempted to devise an understanding of > what it means in terms of a "maker approach". Meetup.com is not a solution for the problem per-se. And it is not an issue of "maker approach" only, if you look at meetup.com as a probable solution, it is a jungle because all sorts of communities are meeting. For instance, while it would be somewhat easy to know of SIG's, but if I wanted to have a list of all FOSS groups (which include SIG's) all over India, that's a sort of next to impossible task. I wish there was a way to hack meetup to get info. on even all tech meetups in India but that's also not possible. I have to give a city name to get some listing happening :( Also not all the communities either know or have persons who could manage meetup.com because it becomes another site to look at for events apart from facebook,lwn.net, twitter.com, mailing lists etc. etc. There are communities which use both facebook and meetup as a dumping ground for events and there is nobody to answer even simple queries. I wish there was something like lwn.net for India which would be neutral place where people could post event stuff and be able to gather intel on all FOSS events happening in the country, do accept that don't have any ideas on the subject other than to have something similar like that albeit on the regional (India) scale. > Without specific example of "cabals", it would be somewhat difficult > to paint an entire generation/group of participants to be prolific > members of secret coteries. To the last point of "no communication" I > would put forward that this is an orthogonal comprehension of > community growth and the model around community formation. Communities > do not talk with communities, people do. And across India there are > enough examples of individuals (participants and contributors) who > work within the upstreams of their projects, laterally across projects > of their own interest and within their own community around the > geographical location. I was not talking about the upstreams of projects, I was talking more of lateral integration as in getting more people in your community as well as talking to other communities per-se. > This discussion can be of material interest only if there is enough > specific examples discussed (with names redacted, if required) and > thereafter conclusions drawn. > I don't want to go there as this will just in-flame the issue more. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal, Community Lead, Hamaralinux.org _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc ILUGC Mailing List Guidelines: http://ilugc.in/mailinglist-guidelines
