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[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 06:10:41PM +0100, nelson marques wrote:
> 
> According to some older information that you can search on the list, someone
> placed up that only around 10% of the people who use Fedora contribute
> activelly to the Project. Why don't the other 90% do? 

There are a few ways to think about that other 90%.

The traditional advertising way is to appeal to them.  The more you
have, the more they spend on your products.

But what we have is a community.  It is one of many, many important
communities in the world.  Everyone who is involved in each community
cannot contribute to every community they are in.  In some communities
they have to be part of the consumers, part of the wide user base who
are part of the "greater meaning."  It is not reasonable, possible, or
sustainable to expect all of them to contribute.

Rather than looking to grow our project to 100%, we could be thinking
about helping enough people come fresh in to the project so that we i)
don't burn out the people here, and ii) we can grow at a sustainable
rate.

There is an article I wrote about this:

http://iquaid.org/2009/04/14/community-sets/

By helping people who are consumers become participants, the people
currently interested in becoming contributors are more naturally
attracted from that group.

Does this difference make sense?

- Karsten
-- 
name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
team:                Red Hat Community Architecture 
uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
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