2016-03-10 10:30 GMT+01:00 Jona Azizaj <jonaazizaj(a)gmail.com>:
Hi there,
Jona here, Fedora Ambassador from Albania. I saw it fit to write to the
mailing list after being looped in one of the meetings FAmSCo had yesterday
on 9th March.
I try to regularly check the logs of the meetings which feel important to
me, so the last FAmSCo meeting was no exception here. Somewhere down the
line in the meeting, around 15:43 in the log [1] a discussion around the
definition of "community" in Albania and Greece sparked, specifically
initiated by Robert Scheck, which on behalf of the community I represent,
we find troubling:
- "Sorry, but you can not treat Albania as a real community so far. We
had the same "community" in Greece some years ago - and after 2 years, most
of them went away...to Mozilla."
- "a community is something that exists for really a lot of years and
is healthy"
Although initially a surprising statement, I went on to read further
clarification, however there was no resolution found, with the suggestion
coming up that this should be taken to the mailing list, which I am doing
so hereby.
So, since there has been a discussion taking place where Albania's
contributions (and so also my contributions) have been mentioned without me
being present, I would hate to keep silent about this. As someone who led
grassroots efforts to start up the Fedora community in Albania, dedicating
more time to the Fedora project than anything else in my free time, seeing
comments like these from a fellow Fedora Ambassador (let alone mentor) is
insulting to the hundreds of hours of work put in by fellow community
members in Albania, including myself. Seeing myself in this position, I
also doubt that any contributor from Greece feels comfortable in a similar
fashion with these comments.
I didn't want this topic to sink in the meeting logs, so I brought it up
here in the mailing list to gather your general feedback and thoughts on
this matter (and to avoid this in the future ideally).
I am deeply concerned with comments like this out of nowhere, and think
that there are others sharing my concerns.
On behalf of the Albanian Fedora community.
Jona Azizaj
[1]
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2016-03-09/famsco.2016...
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Hi Jona,
I followed this meeting yesterday and also saw the comment regarding your
community. Before adding my personal thoughts, let me add e few
informations. Robert is a "long term" contributor in EMEA and probably is
one of the most correct persons I know within in the community. Every
ambassador who got mentored by him gets a very good overview about what it
means to be a good contributor. Nobody, and I did not understand his
statement like that, wants to judge the work of other people, of other
countries or cultures. We are all contributors, and we all do Fedora stuff
in our spare time. Nobody gets forced to do anything, and that means you
won't be never classified as first or second class contributors.
Going down the log you will have noticed Remy who wanted to clarify
Robert's statement, and I feel all parts clarified quite clearly the
unlucky use of the word "real". Me, you, and most of the EMEA contributors
are not english native speakers, and also Robert clarified it saying what
he meant. His thought was about *long term* contributors, which still is
relative IMO. 2 years for me or you could be long term, while for other
people could be just the beginning of contributing. And I don't think our
greek friends understood it wrong, we know that many of them in the past
found it more interesting to contribute to Mozilla, but we have still many
Fedora contributors in Greece. Unfortunately the number of contributors
goes up and down, I see it in Italy too, the only thing we can do as
ambassadors is to involve as many people as we are able to, right?
Please don't understand my reply wrong, Remy already jumped in during the
meeting to clarify this unlucky statement (thx Remy). I would just add that
writing fast in a meeting, where you can sort of "feel" what people are
thinking (maybe because you know them personally), and reading logs is
different.
We have put many efforts to try to make grow the community in countries
like Albania, but also Serbia and many others. I also mentored people of
those countries and we all want to have many many strong communities. So
please continue in what you are doing, we all appreciate your hard work as
we appreciate it of any other Fedora contributor.
Just my two cents to the topic, thanks for bringing it up to avoid
misunderstandings in the future.
Looking forward to see you soon in a Fedora event.
Kind regards
--
Robert Mayr
(robyduck)