On 25/05/10 10:34, Matthew Daubney wrote: > Hello, > > First of all a brief apology for not sorting this out sooner, moving > house has taken somewhat longer than I originally intended. I'm hoping > to start getting things back on track now. > > Secondly, thanks to the people who turned up to my (frankly awful) talk > at Oggcamp on this subject. Next time I have a chance to talk about what > I'm trying to achieve I _should_ be able to do it better! As a result of > that I have some notes I'm slowly going through to gain some ideas of > how to move forward, but this moves me onto point three. > > What drives you to help support random strangers for no reward? Someone > pointed out to me at Oggcamp that understanding this may be the crux of > being able to actually help drive people to improve. > > I've had a sit down, a cup of tea and a bit of a think on this and will > put hand to keyboard this evening and lay out why I help people, but I > want to see if I can get a better understanding of why others do so > without influencing their decisions. > > So really, what drives you to support people? What, in your own opinion, > could be done to help motivate yourself to do better? > > I'd be very appreciative of any responses.
An associated factor is the support of non strangers, for example friends or family members (FOFM). Support of random strangers is probably a more advanced case. I think fofm stuff is significant because as far as I can see, most of the proprietary software user world is supported via fofm, certainly Windows anyway, and particularly for non techy users. This became most obvious to me at the time I decided to cease supporting any thing other than GNU/Linux systems some years ago. It was obvious that a relatively large number of people would have been delighted if I had been happy to (continue) supporting them on a fofm basis. I came to the conclusion that the glue which held much of the Windows world together was in fact the fofm network. Some more confident users were more independent and anyway made good use of online information, but they were the tip of the iceberg. As an aside, I know a number of very able people who use both Windows and Ubuntu, and who continue selflessly to support fofm's in (mainly) windows. In addition to the undesirable situation producing Ubuntu Bug #1, the fofm support of proprietary systems, mainly Windows, simply prolongs, colludes with, and supports the situation, for whatever reasons. I see these reasons whatever they may be, as most important, and useful to understand, because the proprietary software industry relies on the support. This is to the detriment of free software. The use of fofm and more extended support for users of freedom loving software is to the advantage of free software. There could be a win-win situation here somewhere, for freedom loving software, anyway. -- alan cocks Ubuntu user -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
