a request from a friend in KDE

[Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca>]

hi all,

A couple of years ago I got the chance to meet Mario Fux at a KDE
technical summit that I was invited to (which he organised and put quite
a lot of work into).

He's doing a thesis that requires input (a survey) from as many free
software contributors as possible.  Since he didn't want to randomly
spam our lists, he asked for me if I could pass this letter on to as
many GNOME hackers as I could.

I apparently don't have his restraint when it comes to not randomly
spamming.  Sorry for that.  If you want to ignore this message, feel
free.  Otherwise, if you have some spare time before Sunday, please
consider helping out a friend.

His message follows.  Thanks, and sorry for the noise.


From: Mario Fux <mfux ife uzh ch>

Dear Free Software contributor*

I'm currently in the process of writing my diploma thesis. I've worked
hard 
during the last few weeks and months on a questionnaire [1] which shall 
collect some data for my thesis. Furthermore the data of this survey
will be 
interesting for the Free Software communities as well.

So please take some time or add it to your todo list or, even better, go 
directly to my questionnaire [1] and help me make a great diploma thesis
and 
improve the Free Software community in some ways. 

The questionnaire [1] takes some 20 to 30 minutes. At the end of the 
questionnaire you'll find a way to participate in a draw where you can
even 
win something nice.

In a first round I got the feedback that the length of the questionnaire
[1] 
and that some questions (mostly the ones at the beginning of the
questionnaire 
about the 12 different tasks) are quite abstract and difficult. But
please try 
it, try your best and take the time and brain power. The remaining part
of the 
questionnaire [1] (after these two pages with the tasks questions) is
quite 
easy and quickly done. And you have the possibility to come back to
where you 
have left filling in the questionnaire [1] after a shorter or longer
break.

And if there are any questions, feedback or you need help don't hesitate
a 
moment to write me an email or ping me on IRC (freenode.net and
oftc.net) as 
unormal.

This survey will be open till Sunday, the 9th of March 2014, 23.59 UTC.

Thanks to all for reading and helping and towards the summer of 2014 you
can 
read here what all the data you gave me showed us and where we can learn
and 
improve.

Thanks in advance and best regards
Mario Fux

[1] http://survey.kde.org/index.php/783182/lang-en

* By contributor I mean not just developers but translators, artist,
usability 
people, documentation writers and many more. Everybody who contributes
in one 
way or the other to Free Software.