question for board members

[inode0]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 8:39 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> One could say the quality vs quantity thing applies our volunteers too.
> I've seen WAY more turnover in the last year then years past on the
> Infrastructure team despite lots of work to do and lots of work handed
> out.  At least there I don't know that we're attracting the right kind of
> volunteers.  I'm worried our "every user is a potential volunteer" push
> might be back firing a bit.  Fedora's a large free software community, I'm
> not sure it's the biggest but it's a big one.

I very strongly agree with this observation Mike. The vast majority of
users probably just want to be users but they can be swept up with
enthusiasm about contributing and in the end most consume resources
from other contributors while trying to get started and then
disappear. It is sad to see people who express interest and some
effort leave, it is really sad to add up the opportunity cost that the
project suffers in that process.

Seeing massive startup failure among new contributors is one reason I
think the project  should focus more on targeting contributors
directly, rather than hoping to siphon them off from an increase in
the user base. I see potential users and potential contributors as
largely disjoint sets at this point. There are reasons to target both
audiences, but I think they need to be treated as different target
audiences.

John