[kde-community] Vision, mission and manifesto - what is their definition and purpose?

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 09:42:31 PM Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > Also, what do you think about the relation between vision and mission ?
> >
> > When I joined the "vision team", my original proposal was to only define a
> > mission, because I felt that visions make more sense for products than for
> > communities.
> > However, Lydia convinced me that having a common vision for the future to
> > work towards can have more positive effect on a sense of purpose and
> > motivation than only defining a strategy, so I agreed to define a vision
> > first and then derive the mission from that.
> 
> That's just Lydias opinion.

No need for this, not even if you think it's funny. For the record, it's *not* 
just Lydia's opinion, so don't try to give that impression.

> No, seriously, in the last weeks several people contacted me in private
> email  and expressed that they are not exactly happy, some even seriously
> frustrated with the strong emphasis on non-technical topics in KDE in the
> last few years, and they would prefer to get some more emphasis on
> technology and products back.

You know, same here: People express concerns about people who want to steer 
KDE into a self-fullfilling, narrow-minded playground project. You know what I 
tell them: Please take part in the open discussions about that -- that is why 
we're having these discussions.

In a do-ocracy such as KDE, you take part and are able to influence direction, 
or you stand at the sidelines and watch, but you don't stand at the sidelines 
and watch and dictate through backdoor politics.

> This (obviously) includes me. Maybe this also includes many of the people
> who  said "vision, strategy and focus" in the evolve-survey ?
> 
> Sorry to be blunt: for me, a catchy one-sentence-vision statement *alone* 
> won't impress me, everyone has one today. It won't give me a sense of
> purpose  or anything. It's just a catchy phrase. Maybe I'm too old for
> that.

Could you please try to stick to the facts and ontopic -- then you wouldn't 
have to be blunt. I think this discussion is hard enough to follow as it is 
already: Nobody requires the vision statement to be just one sentence, we want 
to try to make it as clear as possible. It's not like we're not limited to 140 
characters here. Please don't throw such strawmen into the discussion.

> Anyway, I think vision and mission should be defined together, otherwise
> we'll  get ugly discussions once we have decided on the vision, and get
> into mission- land.

As I said, I think your draft makes a fine mission statement, we could amend 
the vision draft we came up with.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org