Re: [Lubuntu-admins] Contributors Reception

Hello all,

Hello Walter,

Sorry for the delay in my response. You caught me sleeping! :)

The main problem with humans and open-source/non-profit organizations is how to keep people motivated when the key factor that people consider is money. From thereon, I am certain all flavours are suffering big time to have regular contributors.

The fact that we barely have support from Canonical also doesn't help, but I understand and respect their decision about that. And, in a way, thank god we don't, because more heads deciding can cause trouble...

2015-04-28 2:07 GMT+01:00 Walter Lapchynski <wxl@xxxxxxxxxx>:

Gustavo, thank you so much for this email. I can't agree more that
this is true. We need more resources. It's really an issue among all
flavors. In fact, I can even say it's true in the Kubuntu team (after
hanging out with a bunch of them this weekend) and they're old school
when it comes to flavors. So you're right, this is a global issue
(though Ubuntu has paid Canonical employees so it's not SO MUCH of an
issue with Ubuntu Desktop, Cloud, Touch, Server, and so on… and we
probably can't help Kylin why we're still speaking English ☺).

That being said, we could maybe start a blueprint and invite other
flavor team leads to join in. I don't know how other flavor teams
organize themselves between Team Leaders or even if they do, but I
have contacts with just about every team, so I can try to spread the
word.

This could be interesting indeed, although I am not sure if it would work okay. I mean so many flavours, so many intentions, so many people trying to boss everyone around...

I'm also on the Ubuntu News team. So if you want to lever that, we
probably can. Maybe it might be interesting to know why people don't
contribute and why the people that do contribute continue to do so.
This might be worth a survey.

And we are back to motivation issues :P I'm keen on having Ubuntu's support because they have more impact. However, I'm not seeing them interested in doing so. I mean... They don't do it regularly, don't they? The problem with the open-source world is actually related to that I wrote, in my perspective. Ubuntu is great, different and pretty decent, actually. Then you find some other flavours under Ubuntu's packages and such, like Gnome, Kubuntu and Mint. These are basically Ubuntu distributions with different desktop applications (or whatever it is called). However, they are still considered a part of Ubuntu family. But they don't serve a purpose, like Lubuntu does. The ultimate goal of Lubuntu is to have a lightweight distribution that suits all types of computers, but rocks hard on super hold computers. I respect Canonical's decision and I understand them (well, there's no problem for them accepting every distribution as family of Lubuntu since they barely help us out - by judging their presence in the time I have been around). In the end, there are so many flavours and they all work for different fronts. People can easily get lost understanding them and eventually they will lose interest. That almost happened to me before, to be honest...

We lack coherence, consistency, goals, purpose and objectives around here. That is what I wanted to discuss with Ubuntu people, since I am in favour of a convergence between distributions. Not eliminating all, but keeping only those that are willing to go for Canonical's mission and goals, or that, at least, they serve something important in the open-source world. To show you that the problem of not having a proper goal, mission and objective brings negative consequences to many other things, I will give you one last example: I recently saw a hands-on with the Ubuntu Phone and it made me so sad to realize that they (Canonical) don't know how to pitch the phone and the OS but it is not their fault! The concept itself, is bad, repetitive and not innovative at all, specially considering how they did it. I thought hard about this last sentence and I know that what I am saying may sound too pragmatic. But let's face it: What we do here is basically a repetition of what others did, but we just change a par of commas here and there and call a new distribution, a new OS, a new app and so on. Senseless, right? This is my exaggerated perception of things, by the way. Don't get too offended, but this is important to understand why people may not get involved.

People usually volunteer at animal shelters because they like animals and they want to provide better lives to needing animals. They have a reason and a purpose. That is why we should bring on board a good mission, objectives and goals. I feel motivated for Lubuntu as it has a purpose. However, it's shameful we do not do more to the world. I know, it is for free and sometimes there is a limit. But even so, I am certain we could do a load lot more. I am sure we can develop stuff under the OS concept that can have a great and positive impact on people's lives. Every time I try to justify this I think of Google Chrome and Google OS. Well, this video in particular. Google OS is open source, as you know it (probably better than me), therefore it applies to explain my point.

I can also tell you that you're not alone in this thinking. You may
have heard me mention that I have Lubuntu QA t-shirts and that I'm
going to create a sort of contest (with the shirts as prizes) to
encourage more contribution, especially from new contributors. This
was inspired by a similar idea from the Xubuntu team.

My idea was to sort of gamify this with a bias towards new
contributors and multiple contributions. I've been trying to think of
how to do that logistically. I really want to have this done before
LXQt goes live in Lubuntu (which should ideally not be in an LTS
version, so if it's going to happen this year, 15.10).

That being said, I'd appreciate thoughts on the subject as well as
ideas on how we could apply this to the other teams and flavors.

Well, I already wrote a massive email because I felt the need to open up and bring those stuff to discussion. In my opinion, it all matters to define the open source world, how we want to do things and why people work with us. Nevertheless, I must say I thought about this concept and this may increase our awareness, indeed.

Creating sort of challenges with prizes (simple, easy to obtain for us and even intangible objects) is excellent. It raises our awareness level, engages the community as one and we might bring some guys to the teams - the ultimate goal. If we opt to attempt this, it is super crucial to make sure we are aware of our resources, what we can't and what we cannot do. Of course, from thereon I am willing to help out in anything I can.

My strategy was more of a communication plan. First we focus hard about what we do here, why we do it (we can even try to prove it with a survey, as you suggested), we "talk" to people on a daily base and, eventually, we will ask for people's help. We can even organize a "Release a distribution with us! Get to know the process in several teams" and perhaps people will find it interesting and will stick around.

Just some ideas I came up last night. Probably not sufficient, but hopefully someone else will feel inspired to continue exploring the numerous possibilities we have to accomplish our goal.

Thanks again for doing such a darn good job!!!

You don't need to thank me! :) Specially when nothing is done yet :P

But I need to apologize for the long, massive and (probably) boring email.

Thank you Walter!

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 4:57 PM, Gustavo Silva
<gustavosantaremsilva@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> In the past few days I have been thinking in a way to get more contributors
> to get involved with Lubuntu. In the beginning I was thinking about a
> broader approach and hence we could gather forces with the guys at Ubuntu to
> get more people involved. I think it is fair to say that we could use some
> help to all teams.
>
> I don't want to generalize and hopefully you won't get me wrong. The Wiki &
> Docs is reduced to me only, the devs have always passed difficulties the
> keep the release on time and with great quality and I'm not sure if we have
> a Communications TL, after Silverlion (Jens) had to freeze his
> contributions. If we do, then maybe we could refine the current approach in
> order to get more people involved. I have some ideas that I can discuss if
> needed.
>
> Nevertheless, I'm guessing that new users bring new blood around and that is
> something that we must appreciate. Lubuntu is an important distribution of
> Ubuntu, and I definitely don't want to see it attached to hard, individual
> work. Besides, I'm guessing that all teams would benefit in numerous
> projects if they just had an extra par of hands. Now I can speak for myself:
> I have so many ideas for our Wiki... But not enough time. I want to help,
> but I can't do it alone. I know some of you guys have been helping a lot and
> you'll always give a hand when you can, but unfortunately that is not
> enough.
>
> A social media strategy plan is an idea, but I am not sure if there is
> something you guys have previously tried. Also, I think it would be great if
> we gather forces, and not recruit solely to one team. In any case, I don't
> have access to the Facebook official page, so I am sure I wouldn't be able
> to officially announce anything.
>
> So, summarizing, I have a couple of questions to discuss with the admins:
> - Do we have a team leader for Communications?;
> - Does s/he has a marketing plan?;
> - Which teams want to collaborate and try to define a strategy to increase
> our number of contributors?;
> - Even if you don't want to gather forces, would you mind suggesting a few
> ideas to bring some people closer?
>
> Apologies for the long email. I really appreciate your time and help on
> this.
>
>
> --
> Best Regards / Obrigado e com os melhores cumprimentos,
> Gustavo Silva
>
> Phonebloks, Partnership Manager
> Lubuntu Wiki & Documentation, Team Leader
>

> --
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--
@wxl | http://polka.bike
Lubuntu Release Manager, Head of QA
Ubuntu PPC Point of Contact
Ubuntu Oregon LoCo Team Leader
Ubuntu Membership Board Member
Eugene Unix & GNU/Linux User Group Co-Organizer

Best Regards / Obrigado e com os melhores cumprimentos,

Gustavo Silva

Phonebloks, Partnership Manager
Lubuntu Wiki & Documentation, Team Leader