[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] s/project/community
From:       Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-05-12 19:56:25
Message-ID: 200705122156.25451.schumacher () kde ! org
[Download RAW message or body]

On Saturday 12 May 2007 16:09, Torsten Rahn wrote:
> On Saturday 12 May 2007 11:32:32 jos@mijnkamer.nl wrote:
> > "The KDE project released ..."
> > You can say "The KDE communit released ...", right?
> 
> No. In this case I'd say it's the Project. Seriously, there's another big
> difference between those: A community doesn't necessarily have a
> responsibility apart from a social one.
> On the other hand if I hear about a project releasing something then I
> expect at least a somewhat hierarchical structure behind with points of
> contacts and single people who are responsible for certain tasks.
> 
> So from the point of view of someone outside having a great community may
> be impressive to look at. But if you want to communicate with it then a
> "project" is certainly more appealing (unless you like the feeling of
> talking to a swarm of bees).

I thought about this as well, as it felt as somewhat too soft to say "the 
community released" at first. But if you think about it again you can find a 
tremendous strength in this statement, because for KDE the community is in 
fact in charge of basically every aspect of what we do. We don't have 
benevolent dictators, steering committees, or companies controlling the 
development. We are special, because we are still able to create software of 
highest quality, or maybe just because of that.

So saying that the community releases KDE puts the focus on this strength and 
the heart of what KDE is about. Maybe we have to change people's perception a 
bit, so that the message reaches everybody, but in this case I think we have 
the potential to do so. It's so perfectly in line with our mission, our 
passion and what makes KDE effective, that saying anything else than that the 
community releases KDE, would mean wasting momentum and letting go a 
tremendous opportunity.

Well, and communicating with the community is pretty easy these days. We have 
contributors in different well-defined roles, we have maintainers, various 
special teams and working groups, we have the e.V. as representing 
organization, etc. We all take personal responsibility for what we do, 
because we do it as a community and not as assigned members of a project.

I think we can be really proud of our community and how we work. We don't have 
to imitate something we speculate to be possibly more appealing.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@kde.org>
 
_______________________________________________
This message is from the kde-promo mailing list.

Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on \
or temporarily stop your subscription.


[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]