<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="im"> </div>As an aside, I don't believe too much in the "scratch your own itch" explanation for free software volunteer coding. If you go for example <a href="http://planet.gnome.org" target="_blank">planet.gnome.org</a> and skim through the posts there while asking to yourself why these people take the time to write free software instead of watching TV, I don't think you will find many cases of people who are hacking on things because they themselves need that feature in their app. I think that the itches they are scratching are more likely the desire to do something fun and interesting and to do something more significant than earning money in a bank by managing code monkeys or writing software that nobody they know will ever use. That's why I think that we can tune our message much better in order to reach those people, I don't see why the GNOME desktop would have more appeal to hack on it than Sugar.</blockquote><div> I agree with Tomeu and I was thinking about it and decided just for fun to try to restate what he said in education jargon. I think people want to do projects that are authentic and within their zone of proximal development. Authentic = more significant then earning money in a bank. We help our volunteers understand that their contributions are authentic by giving them concrete usecase and feedback from actual kids using it in schools. I hope we can also do it by having people able to go into schools with sticks and have kids use Sugar and learn. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentic_assessment#About">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentic_assessment#About</a> Zone of Proximal Development. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development#Development">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development#Development</a> This means a task that is neither to easy or to difficult but is optimal for learning. I think one of our challenges is to help potential volunteers find tasks that they can learn from, but still do with tons of assistance. We can also turn that around and take our most important tasks, and figure out where could we find people for whom those tasks are within their ZPD. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="im"> > Another release at our current development and growth rates and Sugar > will be pretty deployable. Another release after that an it will be > pretty usable. > > As developers, the best way you can engage more developers is by > making Sugar great. The most effective way for open source projects > to attract and retain contributors is to have a good base of code and > a healthy community. </div>Yup, totally agreed. Regards, Tomeu <div><div></div><div class="h5"> > david > >> Regards, >> >> Tomeu >> >>> Sean >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) >> <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> >> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> >> > > > > -- > David Farning > Sugar Labs > <a href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">www.sugarlabs.org</a> > _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </div></div></blockquote></div> -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax