[IAEP] Unmaintained Projects and Teams

[Bernie Innocenti]

El Thu, 01-07-2010 a las 11:29 +0200, Tomeu Vizoso escribió:

> So that could be what defines a project, but which are the
> consequences of becoming an official project? I would say that it
> means that SLs as a community accepts some responsibility about the
> goals of the project. That could mean that the marketing,
> localization, infrastructure, development, community, etc. teams are
> supposed to cater for the needs of each project.

I wish we could offer a quality assurance on anything we do, but we
can't. We have no budget for any project and resources can disappear at
any time without advance notice. SoaS is no exception.

Perhaps we could agree to remove projects from the side-bar once it
looks like the maintainer(s) went MIA and things are bitrotting.

Speaking of which, we also have plenty of dead teams listed in our
side-bar. Someone made this sarcastic comment: "Sugar Labs seems to have
more teams than contributors". It hurts because it's true :-(

Proposal: draw a list of teams that should be hidden in some "Disbanded
Teams" page. Or, to put it positively, "Teams Awaiting Coordinators".
At the top of the team page, we could add a template saying "This team
is looking for a coordinator, ask inside". How does it sound?


> What will help more to the Sugar ecosystem: a big organization that is
> willing to take care of everything related to Sugar or several
> organizations focused on their aspects of their choose?

The second, of course. But do these organizations have to hide their
projects in some obscure website, away from the eyes of the wider Sugar
community?

Red Hat and Canonical got into the habit of showcasing their top
projects on freedesktop.org, gnome.org, kernel.org and similar umbrella
organizations.


> I don't think this is an easy decision without precognition powers,
> but I'm worried about SLs losing focus.

Organizations like as are rarely good at maintaining focus. Communities
are good at brainstorming and trying new ways. Synthesis and polish are
the specialty of businesses and organizations ran like a business. But
these organizations are often bad at attracting volunteers and getting
the best out of them.

With OLPC, Paraguay Educa and Activity Central, we already have 3
business-like players working on making Sugar a finished product that
can be given to users. I wish we could invite more of these companies to
work on making Sugar a great product.

If, instead, we try to be *both* a community and a business within the
same organization, we may end up being schizophrenic. Could this be a
variation of the Innovator's Dilemma?

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/