number of Fedora contributer (was: Re: General information About Fedora)

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 7/25/08, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
> - there is no real mechanism that makes sure that all the people in the
> accounts system are still active. I'm quite sure that there are some
> "inactive" accounts from people; and also tend to say that is likely there
> are some accounts from people that tried to became a contributor without
> succeeding in the end (for example because they found no sponsor)

I agree that we don't have a mechanism to track 'active' and
'inactive'. I think we should solve that specific question so we can
get a better handle on the real manpower growth.  I would think we
have the ability to at least track sponsored individuals based on a
cvs acces flag.  But the question of sponsorship is too narrow a
definition of what it means to be a contributor.  All of this hints as
to a larger question.. what does it mean to be a Fedora contributor.
It has to mean more than access to the cvs as a package maintainer. We
are growing new initiatives outside of what is present in the package
collection.

Why doesn't contributing to a project of fedorahosted count as
contribution under the larger Fedora project umbrella?  Just as
contributing video screencasts to the re-imagined fedora tv initative?
 The work that goes on outside the strict definition of the
distribution is still important work, and its important for us to be
able to point to that work and note that we as a project are providing
the space for people to collaborate and get things done. If we can't
point to project at fedoraproject as part of a wider sense of
sustainable community contribution we can't make the argument that its
worth continuing to invest in the colloborative space big enough for
something like fedorahosted to be useful.  If projects under
fedorahosted don't want to stand up and be counted, then we cannot
build on the success that is there to extend our community
infrastructure into even more areas.

What we have to do is be more careful about defining what we mean to
contribute and to restate that definition every single time we hand a
number out so noone has to attempt to interpret for themselves what
that number means.

-jef