I pushed this through moderation because Pete wasn't a list member, he's
now added as being allowed to post. I'm not sure about Jason, so I'm
including you in the Cc:.
On 02/28/2013 09:43 AM, Pete Muir wrote:
http://www.theopensourceway.org/book/The_Open_Source_Way-Introduction-Ess...
I'm confused about the statement:
"When we talk about community in the The Open Source Way, we mean the
community of contributors who are a superset to all other
communities."
I can't see how the community of contributors is a superset of all
the other groups listed. There are certainly an intersections between
the various groups, but it would be perfectly possible to contribute
towards something without using it, or evangelise something without
contributing to it. And of course very possible to like something
without contributing anything to it.
Can anyone clarify what this statement is supposed to mean?
I would like to reuse this terminology, but right now I can't
understand it, and without understanding it, I can't use it ;-)
And in clarifying we may find that it needs modifying, which is fine.
The intention in that statement is to say something like, "We know
people use the term community to refer to all sorts of things. When we
say 'community' in this book, we're focusing on the people who - by
their work as a community - enable all the other communities to happen
through tools, processes, or purpose."
Superset may be the wrong word, therefore. Super-enablers? :)
The purpose of the book is to help people understand the methods that
have worked to make successful communities of contributors (which are
also communities of practice.) Contributor communities are often the
smallest percentage of the overall people interested in a technology,
project, etc. There are many people who use and are passionate about a
technology, but for an open source project, there generally must be
contributors for all the rest to happen. (Yes, there can be people
evangelizing and using tech that is not actively maintained, but that is
the exception and out of scope for the book (unless someone is trying to
revitalized contributors.))
- Karsten
--
Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Analyst - Community Growth
http://TheOpenSourceWay.org .^\
http://community.redhat.com
@quaid (identi.ca/twitter/IRC) \v' gpg: AD0E0C41