Hi frank

> We actually need a brief on what it means to be a Good Citizen(tm) in 
> this community. Not just being polite and all that social stuff, but 
> what the community needs from us as members. Reviews? Fixes? Bug 
> reporting?
>
> So. Stephane, does your frustration stem from the lack of reviewing 
> that happens? (I'm sure you've answered this before many times, but 
> this topic's come up so many times these past few months that it's 
> difficult to see the wood for the trees.)

I think that my primary frustration is lack of communication. For 
example, I tried to organize
something at ESUG and result: no communication or nearly nothing. Now 
nobody knows or cares
about telling what are their constraints or needs. Surely this is not 
intentional but the result is the same.

I think that if overly busy and smart people do not have the time to 
talk and drink beers together then nothing good can happen for the 
whole.  And I mean we need a lot of beers to drink before we can have a 
real trust. So if we let the "drinking beer occasions" just happen by 
chance on conferences then we are minimizing the probability that we 
will communicate.  (I mean communicate not making noise and talking. 
:)) and create good stuff. This is ok just sad. Look Diego is the 
perfect case: he got Squeak on 80000 PC which is a real step for 
education-oriented people and I'm not sure that the communication is 
really working with Etoy people so Diego forked and he is right. Now 
this is not really a problem but with a bit of communication  at the 
right level we would dramatically improved the situation. I talked with 
Mike and he knows the problem.

Another way to solve a bit this problem would be to organize a real 
meeting point every year in Europe and in the US. But I tried and it 
failed so do not count on me to retry but ESUG could offer 
infrastructure but do not be excited by the idea. Look for the 
education track at ESUG this year nobody contacted us so it will not 
happen.

For the future I will apply a simple model now to my actions: keep my 
internal flame alive and may be use it from time to time to provide 
energy to other projects when I have more energy.

I'm even wondering why I raised this issue in the mailing-list.

> Some random thoughts:
> * We need people to find bugs.
> * Then we need people to write tests for those bugs.
> * Then we need people to write fixes for those tests. We don't need 
> reviews of these fixes - if they pass the tests, then they fix the 
> problem!
> * Then we need people to commit those fixes (and tests) to the update 
> stream.
>
> On a slightly different aspect,
> * We need people to provide cool new features for inclusion in the 
> base image.
> * Then we need people to review these new features.
> * Then we need people to commit these enhancements to the update 
> stream.
>
> Finally,
> * We need people to write tests for the base image.
> * Then we need people to use those tests to write refactorings.
> * Then we need people to check the refactorings, making sure they 
> don't break packages (or if they do, to mail the affected 
> maintainers).
> * Then we need people to commit these refactorings to the update 
> stream.
>
> Out of the above, do you assert that we need more reviewers?

yes but not only
But what we really need is a leadership which can be an organization 
that for example
can collect funds, have a decent web page, identify target, motivate 
people, value enhancements...
and not just a bunch of people working on projects without 
communication.

This is sad but we are all programmers and certainly did not follow the 
right curriculum :)

I hope that we will get some good news about that in the future but 
sometimes I'm tired :)
Too much working certainly and train strikes are getting me down.

stef