submitting ideas to Fedora

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Casey Dahlin <cjdahlin at ncsu.edu> wrote:
>  Yes, there are channels to get to developers, and yes they are used more
>  or less effectively, but look at the experience: You want something
>  done, so you go to fedora, and you are linked to a shiny blue website.
>  It intros with a long string of "motherhood and apple pie" speak about
>  collaboration and working together to make fedora better for all of us.
>  Then you post your idea in a nice little template, and collect your
>  thank you for making the world a better place as you log out.
>
>  Making the users feel special is a good objective too, in addition to
>  listening to what they want. Also, making this sharing very public turns
>  the collaboration itself into a kind of advertisement. Others who
>  stumble upon the site get to say "hey, look how collaborative Fedora is.
>  I should check this out."

It only helps if we actually DO something with it. A collection of
ideas that we are pretty sure are not going to be implemented is just
asking for trouble..big trouble.

It's one thing to be honest about a bar of participation and working
to lower that bar.  it's far far worse to build a process whose entire
goal is to give people the false sense that they are contributing when
they are not.  The bright and shiny web entry tool you are
describing... is a lie.  You can't just drive by and leave an idea and
call it contribution.  We can't compile a list of ideas when we KNOW
that they will bitrot because there are no volunteer developers just
sitting around waiting for something to do.  I'd LOVE to have idle
engineering resources at my disposal. Even as a Board member, if I
can't generate the manpower necessary to get what I want done..done...
it's not going to get done.  If you encourage people to make an
effort, and you don't followup on that effort, you quickly end up
being called unresponsive because you asked for ideas and didn't do
jack with them once you got them.

There is a PR angle that must be addressed, but the marketting side
has to follow the engineering and development policies... not the
other way around... or shit just isn't going get done.  You do it like
you want it and you are generating human interest that we can't
followup on.

You want to make something bright and shiny? Work with Greg on his
idea of compiling a list of vetted week-long hacks, with the goal of
giving new people bite-sized work to get them started as contributors.
 Its a totally different concept than the popularity-storm idea.

-jef
>
>  Even if little to no new ideas are reaped from the process, it still
>  makes people happy.
>
>  --CJD
>
>
>
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