[K12OSN] Release cycle too fast

Jim McQuillan jam at mcquil.com
Fri Apr 1 15:42:30 UTC 2005


I read that quote a different way:

Lead:

   Folks like Eric Harrison, David Trask, Chuck Liebow, Jim Kronebush
   and many others (You know who you are), who give their heart and soul
   to improving the current state of affairs and striving to make Linux
   and k12ltsp the best it can be.

Follow:

   Probably 98% of the people on this list who love and appreciate
   what the leaders above all do, and are happy with the way things are
   going.  In fact, it's probably not fair to call them followers,
   because each one of them are leaders in the way they have chosen
   to push k12ltsp in their own environments.
   In the open source community, I think most people float between
   the 'lead' and the 'follow' category, as their time and ability
   permit.

Get out of the way:

   The small set of people who aren't happy with the way things are
   going, but don't want to jump in and help to make them better.
   Deep down, I really don't think there's anybody on the list who
   truly fits this category full-time.  I think people sometimes just
   get caught up in their own world, and forget how hard the leaders are
   working, to make sure the followers have what they need to succeed
   in their deployments of k12ltsp.


It's also important to understand peoples motives.   Open source
developers generally don't work from a list handed to them by someone
else.  That's too much like a job.  Open source guys work on things,
because they want to.  Open source developers are generally
self-starting self-motivated people who see a job that needs to be done,
and they go do it.

Fortunately for us, there's enough people who see enough things that
"they" want to do, that we end up with great things like Linux,
OpenOffice, Firefox, Gnome, KDE, xmms, k12ltsp, ...

When there's a gap between what "needs" to be done, and what someone
"wants" to do, that's where companies like IBM, Novell, Redhat and many
others have stepped forward and hired people to do.  There we are, back
to someone handing a developer a list of things to do.  But, in that
case, it IS their job to do those things.

Leave Eric and friends to do what they do best, we'll all be amazed at
the results.  If there's something that you see that needs to be done,
and nobody is doing it, jump in. We could use the help.


Thanks for listening to my rant,

Jim McQuillan
jam at Ltsp.org



On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, David Trask wrote:

> Steve Honeycutt <steve.honeycutt at gmail.com> on Friday, April 1, 2005 at
> 12:58 AM +0000 wrote:
> >The ole saying of "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." seems fitting
> >for some reason.
> Good point!  So..."get out of the way"   LOL  :-)
>
> In all seriousness, this is a great and fitting quote.  Lead.....run the
> latest and greatest and help with bug testing..etc.   Follow....when ready
> upgrade to the latest stable version and run it for a while.  "Get out of
> the way"...stick with an older, but tried and trusted version and
> remember...if it ain't broke don't fix it.
>
> David N. Trask
> Technology Teacher/Coordinator
> Vassalboro Community School
> dtrask at vcs.u52.k12.me.us
> (207)923-3100
>
> _______________________________________________
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> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>




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