Talk:Community

> Ok now I am pissed! Either you are really an ... or you are just blind. <

That's a little bit harsh IMHO. I would rephrase that as "In which cave did you live the last years?" ;-) -Cinc And it would actually fit a Nick Morrow lived somewhere down in middle/south america before moving back to the US. ;) Markus

There are other sentences as well, which i would rephrase i bit. Like the sentences with BS in it. Even it is BS (at least in the opinion of Ktk) what he was talking about ;-) -diver

Well, the original posting wasn't really backed by good research, we don't have to discuss that. Question is, why didn't the author bother and what has to be done to make people more aware about netlabs and the netlabs projects. Some/most people obviously think some hobby hackers at netlabs are creating halfbaked junk not useful for the broader audience. Maybe ktk should start to give monthly reports on usenet about what's happening atm. For example giving the changelog of uniaud and warpvision. Both projects are funded by netlabs (partly?) but people out there don't know. Netlabs should be more verbose about such things. The same for the firewire driver (is it funded partly by netlabs or just by OS/2 Dresden?). Such a monthly report may also contain a complete list of the stuff available in CVS on netlabs so people see there is way more happening than visible. -Cinc

Completely unadequate comparison!
Reading this stupid attack on Netlabs and its founder and main supporter not only upsets himself, but I (User:Cbockem) must admit that it upsets me too (without being otherwise too much related to Netlabs!).

General
First of all, if that comparison between Netlabs / Adrian Gschwend and Warpzilla / Mike Kaply should be of any value, it should start with stating the main differences between the two projects (instead of just discussing both like commercial businesses):


 * Warpzilla is one single, prominent project, with one leading person. Even though this person is (was?) even partially paid by IBM for what he does for Warpzilla, the project lives of course a lot on his personal engagement. And of course a number of other, less visible supporters.


 * Netlabs is in the first place a website supporting OS/2 developers, not actively "doing projects". So the role it plays for the different projects is mostly like what Sourceforge does at a larger scale with many more projects: Give the project specific group a "place to live" with their code, their discussions etc. How far this really happens is then up to the project relative responsibles! Furthermore Netlabs also started to organize funding for SOME of the projects it hosts. The main "driving person" of Netlabs (besides also a number of supporters) is not and has never been paid by anybody for his Netlabs work, so the project is 100% driven by personal engagement.

For the rest the "10 points" come down finally to only two:

Funding
There are two completely legitimate ways of organizing funding:


 * Do it in a very specific, project related way or


 * Do it in an open way, giving the responsible persons much more freedom to put the money where the need is greatest

While for the Warpzilla project only the first way is at all possible (because it is only one project), Netscape would best support both: Free, open donations giving Netlabs the freedom of supporting things where the need is greatest, and for those who do not want to give as much trust in these people a way to donate more project specific.

No need to debate which is better: they both have their advantages and disadvantages!

Technical remark
This praising of the "Amazon method" is for me a very, very much American only point of view! Because I at least would never donate one single cent to a project working with the Amazon method for the simple reason that it can only be done with a credit card! And as long as I can do without (which is not too difficult here) I will not support this "bank funding system": I want to rather fund projects! And this I can easily do via Mensys, because there I can choose the way I want to do my payment and do it the way it fits my needs. (Sure everyone who wants to can also donate via Mensys with his credit card ;-)).

Efficiency
The efficiency of the Warpzilla project depends a lot on Mike Kaply - and he takes that responsibility with great success, as it seems. But for the efficiency of the Netlabs projects Adrian Gschwend cannot be made responsible! He never claimed that, nor would he be able to do it: He would have to close down Netlabs entirely if people would expect that from him!

Actually the efficiency of every single Netlabs project is 100% up to the respective project related developers. Exactly the same way as it is with Sourceforge: Also there many projects look more or less "dead", while others are very active. But even that can be a wrong impression, because certain "visibly dead" projects are still active anyway, maybe reorganizing, or some lonely person writing code in his spare time, not presenting it from day to day. So it wouldn't make sense at all if Adrian would close down projects not showing any change for, say, one year or so! Even really "dead" project (i.e.: nobody left to work with them currently) are always open to being re-vitalized by anybody taking it up! Which is again a good reason not to close these projects.

Bottom line
Criticism has to be possible, and I am sure Adrian is able to take it. And he also proves that if he admits that the current open funding is not adequate for all potential donators; now that will be changed, allowing for also more project specific donations.

But the kind of general unqualified attacks coming with this "comparison" is 100% contraproductive: As I already stated above, Netlabs is 100% driven by personal enthusiasm, engagement and spare time work! (Only some projects are getting some limited funding.) But also enthusiasm needs to be "funded". I know that Adrian has his ways to "self-fund" his enthusiasm so he can live with the one or other unqualified attack of the current style, but I am sure it still costs him enthusiasm and spare time he would be able to invest in much more productive ways! Is that what the writer really intends to achieve??

Because if the writer of the attack would be interested in a more efficient and productive Netlabs he would 1) engage himself in a productive way, maybe in one of the projects he would like to see more active, and 2) if he sees problematic points discuss them in a limited, very specific way, because only then there is a chance that they can be solved.

It's hard having to defend oneself against such unfounded attacks!

Cinc: Part of the problem is that the author of the mail lives in a different world. He doesn't use the tools we (netlabs people, developers, OS/2 users in germany) use. He apparently doesn't use too much open source software other than Mozilla. He has no deep knowledge of the european developer scene (if any). He has no knowledge which tools are used by a lot of developers. For example he focusses solely on Watcom C when speaking about compilers ignoring the gcc suite completely. He's often ignoring ports from *nix completely when there're similar tools from IBM. Even if these IBM tools may be inferior or buggy as hell. Standard disclaimer: that's my impression after reading mails on a mailing list for quite some years now. I may be completely wrong...

And this is 'Community' ...
Some years ago I visited the LA Zoo. I don't recall exactly, but I seem to remember a sign near some of the cages that read:

'PLEASE DON'T FEED THE MONKEYS'

I'm struck how the sign may be so relevant to this, the first, article in our 'Community Portal'.

This is not USENET. Let's just build and enjoy community with the 'Community portal'.

Or maybe my understanding of 'community' is faulty.