[Owncloud] ownCloud Mailing List for developers

[Christian Reiner]

Hello, 

> >> ownCloud claims to be a project for a community and based on a community.
> >> In my eyes this means ownCloud has to take care of managing that
> >> community.
> > 
> > I have a similar feeling: to some extend people seek more leadership and
> > more transparency. A community manager could help here - any volunteers?
> > ;-)

> On Wednesday 29 August 2012 23:04:25 Klaas Freitag wrote:
> Honestly I doubt a "community manager" really would help here, also the
> word "leadership" kind of scares me, at least if its "set up" ;-)

I think this is a frequent missunderstanding of the term "management". 
Someone who manages something is _not_ a person to make decisions, who 
influences development or who leads someone to some goal. 
Management is an administrational action, a diplomacy service. 

A good management helps to focus discussions, assists in keeping a clear 
overview. It supports decision finding by supplying means of information in a 
suitable way and pointing others to things that slipped. But it does not take 
action on itself, except in administrative issues. 

> I often heard people asking for a community manager if well known
> problems exist but nobody is solving them. I think we're in a state
> where we have quite a core community with very active and smart people.

That is absolutely correct. Great!

> We can solve the problems we see, so my feeling often is that we have a
> lack of entitlement for people to touch things. 

I think the correct line would be: "We _could_ solve the problems we see..."
This is where management might be of use. Currently some things just stay 
untouched, because no one takes care of them. That is not anybodies fault, no 
one is responsible for that in general. 
This is a clear case of a management first noticing that there is some point 
that is still not handled and then trying to find a suitable way how the issue 
can be dealt with. For example by pointing a developers focus to an issue when 
it might well be that he can be of help. Or by collecting and processing the 
given information on an issue so that the real problem gets clear. 
Without management such cases will stay untouched. Even if someone _could_ 
take care of them. 


-- 
Christian Reiner
[ foss at christian-reiner.info ]