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List:       meego-community
Subject:    Re: [MeeGo-community] community contributions to MeeGo
From:       David Greaves <david () dgreaves ! com>
Date:       2011-05-29 20:24:26
Message-ID: 4DE2AB7A.50202 () dgreaves ! com
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On 26/05/11 15:43, Dirk Hohndel wrote:
> Precisely. And I believe that is widely understood. No one at Intel
> would dream of asking you whether you were paid to do your work in
> order to judge whether your work is good. Actually, I know a few
> people in OTC who might ask you that very question, but with the
> opposite intention (i.e. "if you do this just because you are paid,
> then I wonder about the quality of your work") :-)
>
> I certainly am proud and happy when I'm called a hobbyist :-)

It's good to know that Intel have this attitude - but Alison said :
> people asking more or less, "Are you employed to work on MeeGo and or
> are you just a hobbyist?"    The language is so belittling!

I tend to agree with her. However I don't think it's the hobbyist label 
per se; the label *is* used in a disparaging manner with exactly the 
phrase she uses ... the key word that makes it disparaging is "just".

Intel people (especially OTC) may have a more progressive attitude but 
lets not kid ourselves that this is the industry norm. We have to 
recognise that the individual contributor is probably initially seen as 
either a weakness or an irrelevance to most corporate drones. This isn't 
likely to change much unless MeeGo (and the rest of the opensource 
community) does work to ensure that we can communicate both the 
relevance and value that hobbyists bring to the project.

> I dislike the term "hobbyist."    I propose that anyone asked such a
> question call her/himself a "personal contributor" or "individual
> contributor" to MeeGo.    Without such enthusiastic individuals, our
> efforts will fail.     The passions of individuals are less subject
> to management whim than the commitments of major corporations.

Yep - so Alison, I vote for you to do a talk on this topic at the next 
conference : "How my hobby is worth billions..." :)

David
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