On the lack of motivation...

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <y dot rahal at gmail dot com>]

Salam,

I'm writing this following the new thread on 'core' about yet another
missed meeting and Abdo's answer which reminded me of some remarks I
should have given a long time ago. Since I'm rather busy right now,
don't expect me to discuss them thoroughly, but take them just as
notes which you might consider for the next meeting.

1- Core's time should be less spent on technical details. It's
unfortunate to see meeting minutes and agenda still full of installing
this, upgrading that, automating this, and adding yet another
not-so-useful functionality to the website (or completely changing
it)... I don't want to minimize the importance of all the tech stuff,
but time is missing and the server/website etc are not in such a bad
shape that needs constant health monitoring.

2- Development projects have a life of their own. It is not necessary
for core to regularly monitor them and/or contact the projects'
maintainers every now and then. If a project dies then so be it. It's
the maintainer's responsibility. Just tag it as dead or so (or
something like this project is in need of new maintainer etc). But
that's it.

3- Translation projects should have a regular monitoring, But it's
difficult to do if you have very few people with small motivation. The
most important here is to re-ignite the contributors' motivation and
bring more contributors. More below.

4- QAC is a corner stone. But this is the same as above. No motivation
leads to no translation which leads to no QAC.

5- Arabix should not be considered as a development project. This is a
core task, delegated to a developer, but still is a core's one. Having
an Arabic friendly distro is publicity for us to show Linux, in
Arabic, with some Arabeyes programs. The aim is not to ultimately
build an Arabic friendly distro (there are already a lot of them - all
the famous ones are now Arabic friendly) but just a communication
medium to distribute on shows etc. Very small development effort
should be put ont it: I'm no expert in this, but as I read here and
there, it seems to be rather easy to customize existing LinuxCDs...
Effort should rather be made on the artistic side for ex :-)

6- Interaction with the most famous distros/desktops/libs/projects
should be constant, in order to insist on the resolution of the
existing bugs or on the addition of Arabic support. If there are
motivated developers within Arabeyes, they may try to take care of
these issues. Otherwise, a bounty system is required (though I'm not a
fan of it), but that needs money. More below.

7- I think 90% of core's available time should be put on PR. To raise
awareness, bring financial support and whatever else. Arabeyes
visibility, to be honest, is not as important as it deserves. If that
visibility was more important, that would bring: motivation, new
blood, financial support etc. This year we have a chance to be invited
to a lot of conferences etc. This is an opportunity for us. We should
also continue to contact University people, newspapers, lugs (not in
order to federate them ;-)), until we have some success. Also,
contribution to the most visible software projects out there (not only
translating them - again by fixing bugs for ex and introducing new
functionalities), should bring more visibility.

8- Give the website a less dead-look... Really, when was the last
project log? 1.5 month ago! And the last news? 2 months ago! Projects
logs are apart (read above), but the news... I tried in past (when I
was in core) to insist on the fact that the news should less
bureaucratic: ie, it's not necessary to wait for the next big bang to
write a news. Why not put a small news from time to time, which would
give an idea about the activity, even when there is a new software
installation, a downtime, and any small thing like that. Also, I wrote
small perl script which, when cronned, would put on the web page the
list of the latest posts on the mailing lists (author, subject, date,
list) and when adding the cvs mailing list, it would give the latest
CVS commits right on the front page. I remember showing it to Nadim
and Mohammed E. and got some skeptical remarks ;-) The idea is to give
the visitor the impression of _life_ and make him/her visit again the
day after to see what's new. For now, when someone is not subscribed
to the mailing lists, a visit on the website will make them think that
nothing is being done, close the window and never come again. I don't
know if the idea is good. But I believe it's worth considering. Maybe
not in the exact shape, but anything that would bring life into the
website is fine by me.

So that's it. I wanted to insist on the fact that PR, publicity are
essential to reactivate motivation and that's where most of Core's
time should go. It's like a fire: you have to ignite it, but it can
burn fine by itself if you feed it well from time to time ;)

Thanks for reading,

-- 
Youcef R. Rahal