Re: Revitalizing the Urban Center of GNOME

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hey,

> ps. Core maintainers, please respond to this thread. I REALLY want to be
> part of the solution, not the problem. I also want some sort of voice,
> and not be totally rejected from the process, or told to STFU.

I don't write much code, so I'm not sure if I classify as a 'core
maintainer' who has any influence on the direction of GNOME. 

However, one of my inherited job descriptions here at Sun is to try and
keep on the pulse of GNOME development and know what's going on on a
daily basis within the GNOME community. You can't even begin to
understand how important that is, trust me. That job description has
become increasingly hard over the last year or two. 

Like Havoc, I'm really only reading emails from the core maintainers, or
those mails pointed out by other people. It's not like other people's
opinions don't count, but I often find those emails to be drawn out and
badly written, and consequently hard to read. The ability to structure
your emails to communicate your ideas clearly is a key talent that most
of us seem to lack, and desktop-devel-list seems to suffer from that
fact [1].

Communication is so fundamentally important within an open source
project like GNOME. It also cripples it, if done badly.

Glynn

[1] I'm sure someone wrote about this, but I just can't find the
    reference. It's pretty clear though, that the successful people
    within the open source community are the ones that can write.