Getting Things Done

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Thu Aug 2 00:37:31 UTC 2007


Karsten Wade wrote:

> 
> I notice it and don't agree with you.
> 
> Rahul, don't make me waste time explaining why making an open source
> project have a good infrastructure is necessary.  One word explains it
> -- leverage. 

Steering committee or elections for who would be in the steering 
committee is overhead. In a large team it might yield some visible 
benefits but it seems that kind of overhead is unnecessary for a small 
team. I mean, if everybody who is really part of the documentation team 
is part of the steering committee who are you steering?

Infrastructure improvements is all well and good and I have suggested 
several myself including atleast one of what is part of the current 
Google SoC work now so I do understand the value of that.
> 
> Also, do you think you should dictate what people spend their time on?
> If someone wants to work on tools instead of content, who cares?  Who
> are you to try to make people feel bad for working on what they are
> interested in?

I am not dictating anything to anyone and I of course have zero control 
on what people do so that's not the point but it is important to take a 
step back and look at what we have accomplished that matters directly 
for end users. I will say the only things that has mattered is

1) Installation guide
2) Release notes

> Another is a very noticeable lack of content from Red Hat when we got
> started; quite different from the rest of Fedora, who had an entire
> distro to start with.  Heck, even Infrastructure had more hardware to
> start than Docs had content.  Every other team, from Art to Engineering,
> has had a paid person supporting the project, and therefore some kind of
> budget.  Everything we have done in Docs has been boot-strapped.

I have been through that flamewars and got that point through to 
everyone I could possible but you know what? It's high time we moved on.

>   - And often those were the same people you are berating for spending
> too much time dealing with "meetings, processes and tools".

That is indeed my point. If we focus more on end user documentation 
could the same people have accomplished more instead of say dealing with 
the election? Could the irc meetings be say monthly and more discussions 
happen on list. Just maybe something to think about.

Everyone who is active is doing a good job. No doubt about that. The 
question is only on whether we are having the right priorities here. My 
suggestions are going to be simple

1) Dissolve the steering committee and associated elections etc

2) Try and reduce the barriers to the team itself so that we can spend 
more time producing solid documentation for end users instead of dealing 
with overhead.

Rahul




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