latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 23:12:38 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On 2017 M07 5, Wed 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 22:28:24 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > > ...
> > > 
> > > > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > > > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're
> > > > falling
> > > > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our
> > > > efforts
> > > > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years
> > > > massive
> > > > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable
> > > > but
> > > > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > > > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > > > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose
> > > > interest
> > > > and less new blood gets in.
> > > 
> > > Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we
> > > actually
> > > want to accomplish ?
> > > Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
> > > If so, I agree.
> > 
> > Somewhat yes (see my other probably more detailed answer to sebas). As
> > long
> > as it's not used as a mean for exclusion.
> > 
> > For instance, I'd totally be fine with us saying "OK, open data is our
> > strong focus for the next five years, as such we'll try to push further
> > projects in that category like WikiToLearn". Probably wouldn't be my
> > personal agenda (I'm proud we got WikiToLearn in our midst and I got no
> > personal motivation to work on it). Assuming I'd be a Plasma contributor,
> > I
> > would still be able to work on Plasma anyway which would be more to my
> > liking. But, knowing our focus for the next five years, having it on the
> > back of my mind, I would likely be more proactive in talking about
> > WikiToLearn when staffing a booth taking the time to look at it, I would
> > likely keep an eye open for cross-pollination between Plasma and
> > WikiToLearn.
> 
> Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE (but
> I guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.

It wasn't totally random, I picked one I knew you wouldn't like. :-)

And part of my point is that if something like "Open Data" ended up being 
picked, please don't argue it to death to prevent it. We will quickly know 
where everyone stands, but if that's a divisive discussion each we'll keep 
driving people away and we'll win nothing.

In fact, the selection process still needs to be found. As I mentioned earlier 
on we can't do it somewhat unilaterally like organizations like Mozilla can, 
we need to come up with a way to build up that consensus.

> I fully support the idea to figure out some one or a few "main focus" areas
> and push them.
> I never meant, never even hinted to exclude projects which are not in this
> main focus. But OTOH I think we don't need to attract them. Also my
> impression is that this argument is currently used the other way round: we
> are so diverse, e.g. Wiki2Lean, so it is impossible to define what our main
> focus is (implying that everything which is not mentioned in such a
> statement would have to be excluded).

Yes, the fact that we want to write everything as globally encompassing 
prevent us from getting a direction because of our diversity. That's why I 
think having something not necessarily covering every project would help as 
long as we all accept 1) to be supportive of it even if it's not to our liking 
and 2) it's not used as a mean to exclude efforts which don't fall into it.

Both are important, otherwise I don't see it working.

> > IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> > at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> > zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> > influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> > more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> > cross-pollination).
> 
> +1

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com

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