Hi Bryce,
On Mon, 2015-05-04 at 17:44 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
This is something I've wanted to pick your brain on, if you're willing to share thoughts on the subject?
I've always wanted to be invited to write a thesis :-)
One of the things that burnt me out on doing release management for Inkscape years back was the realization we were accumulating tons of users on non-free platforms, and the better we were executing on those platforms the less reason we were giving for them to switch. IOW it felt like our release process and development momentum was getting bogged down fixing Windows bugs to improve Inkscape on Windows, making it easier for Windows users to have the benefits of being on Linux without having to be on Linux.
That's because there are two semi-conflicting ideas. One is this 'demand-driven' development model where we find ourselves with the greatest demand from windows users, that's pretty much the pit of the open source fruit. And the second is the Free Software rationale; where what the user wants to not as important as making the user Free.
This is why it's possible to support Free Software without installing software. Because one can transmit the /ideas/ and lend gravity to the importance of Freedom even to people who will continue to use say Apple products. So long as they /know/ apple sucks, you've got half way there. Much in the same way that people had to first think the environment was important before they would be in any position to voice opinion on city or national policy.
But likewise, it's why delivering open source products is the only real way to support open source projects. Because increasing demand and then translating that into developer action is really all that matters.
Free Software doesn't like open source because open source doesn't want /talk/ about Freedom. Likewise, open source doesn't like to talk up freedom because it might reduce demand.
But we're Inkscape. We want to have both! That's what marks us a FOSS project. What is freedom with no users and what are users who are ignorant of their software freedom....
This time around, one of the main reasons I'm gung-ho
Gnu-ho ;-)
on the funded development stuff is to establish a paid way to provide Windows support and tap the Windows userbase to fund the work, so it is less impact on developers that don't care about Windows, and doesn't hold up the release process so much.
We want to strengthen our connection to users too. We want users to have a certain amount of control over Inkscape's direction and we want their demand to translate into some economic stability for developers. There are all seriously hard problems.
I see more robust patterns being exercised by different projects. And it's good and exciting. But hopefully we can recognize that we are experimenting and we might fail here and there. But not to be disheartened and pick up and continue trying to make the process better.
I'm also personally less driven to see people switch to Linux
Ah yes. This too shall pass. :-) Canonical too have been experimenting and while I would have liked them to have been quicker to admit their failures and grow; the whole Linux field is a little more grown up and has a lot more potential for the future because of it.
Jon had made a good suggestion of writing up some of the defining principles of Inkscape, such as the idea that we don't draw a line of distinction between user and developer, but consider it a sliding scale and try to invite all users to contribute even in small ways.
It takes all sorts. Let's imagine a multi-dimensional set of variable interactions. ;-) it's complicated.
There's probably a handful or two of other ideas along those lines that define our development community, which would be valuable to disseminate more broadly. Do you have more ideas on how we could do this?
It's probably better to think of each pocket of people as divided by barriers rather than divided by deliberate category. A developer is only so because she has overcome the barriers put in the way and managed to commit something. Likewise for testers, artists, ux designers, web workers and they're equivalent tests.
I did want to bring up the info box at the hackfest. I was planning on convincing more people that it was important to both community and education. I'd like to get the beta of the feature in for 0.93 and it finalized for the 1.0. But I'll need both developer support and community support to get that done. Does anyone want to help me with the programming part?
Best Regards, Martin Owens
P.S. sorry if any of this is a bit lucid, I'm high on cold meds.