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Roles and Responsibilities of Users and Community Members
An essay by Brian Teeman on the roles and responsibilites of users and community members in an open source project.
This is the first of several longer blog posts that examine the culture and ethos of an Open Source project, it's development, management, community and future.
Participation in the development of an Open Source Project is in almost all cases voluntary and traditional management cannot apply. Open Source developers are not therefore typically driven by financial motivation. Instead, consciously or not, peer esteem and a desire to acquire new skills are the driving factor.
Continues in full on the Open Source Blog of the Year ;)
This is the first of several longer blog posts that examine the culture and ethos of an Open Source project, it's development, management, community and future.
Participation in the development of an Open Source Project is in almost all cases voluntary and traditional management cannot apply. Open Source developers are not therefore typically driven by financial motivation. Instead, consciously or not, peer esteem and a desire to acquire new skills are the driving factor.
Continues in full on the Open Source Blog of the Year ;)
Tags: community, development, joomla, responsibility
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Comment by Amy Stephen on November 27, 2009 at 1:58pm
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Users are the most important part of any Open Source Project.
With respect, I disagree with all my heart on that statement, Brian. Contributing is not missionary work and a community is not a collective workforce doing things for users. Communities are groups of people with a common need - in this case, a code base, and the accompanying documentation, and support structure.
The most important part of a community is the community of contributors, itself. That whose voice we need to listen to and that is whose needs must be met. Contributors.
The fact that users get benefit from Joomla! and more than not do so without contributing, is a nice side benefit to our efforts, and it actually serves to increase the market and ecosystem for contributors.
This thing has to have value to people who make it happen. Or, why are people motivated to participate? For some, that's learning. For others, that's business. Others still may simply want to be a part of something cool. But, it's the contributors who matter and I encourage people to get in there and contribute to this project. Let your voice be heard and give something of value. Be a part.
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Comment by Brian Teeman on November 27, 2009 at 2:46pm
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Thats what happens when you take a quote out of context.
Then next sentence reads "They show that the developers are serving a need and that they've done something right. More importantly, with the right encouragement, they can become co-developers."
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- Brian, I mean no offense, I just disagree. For me, contributors are the most important part of any open source project and I believe it's really important to recognize that. I don't think meeting a user's needs is always the goal. It depends - on the contributors - and what they are hoping to accomplish together. The common factor is that the result of contributor work is shared by the contributors and that contributing is what gives you a voice in helping guide the effort.
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As the blog says
Agree or disagree.. I don't care
I have my views and they are valid just as your views are valid to you and I'm perfectly fine with that.
Off to write another blog post now that you probably won't agree with either
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lol - well, I'll be the judge of that!
Actually, Brian, I tend to agree with the majority of your views.
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Comment by Klas on November 28, 2009 at 7:20am -
Anyone that writes about such passionate topics does care if people agree, otherwise he would keep he's opinion for himself . And there is nothing wrong with that as we are not robots.
On the above topic - as in any large group you would probably find multiple types of people with possibly totally different sets of motivations driving them. For some it would be some sort of idealistic idea about making world a better place (missionary type), for some it would be a desire to achieve recognition they are not getting offline (the forgotten ones) and grow their self esteem, for some an opportunity for professional self promotion or spreading their business network...and for some of us it would be just the need to improve tools we work with every day. Combine all that with positive spirit and fun for a winning combination (or suppress any of those types and the fun will go away and the project will deteriorate).
But serving users? Serving users is something we strive to as a project..as a whole, as an organization - but one by one, each person for himself, we are here for much different reasons. Serving users is just a welcome byproduct of those reasons.
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Comment by Klas on November 28, 2009 at 7:24am
- To bad that this comments don't allow editing.. had to c/p and delete previous one to correct some typos..
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- wondered why i kept getting alerts of new posts
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Comment by Klas on November 28, 2009 at 8:50am
- Sorry about that, I hope "suck passionate" justifies it :)
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