Re: Questions for candidates

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 06:47, Pat Costello wrote:
> Murray Cummins wrote:
> > 
> > Does anybody actually feel disenfranchised? 
> 
> Well, I don't. Which is why I was so disconcerted at GU4DEC, where I
>  listened in to a presentation that apparently told me that I was not
>  enfranchised in the first place, never mind disenfranchised. 

Wow. That wasn't at /all/ my intent, and if that's how it came across, I
failed badly in the purpose of my talk. Up front, it is worth noting
that that talk was given by someone who (1) hasn't written a lick of
code for gnome and (2) feels fairly enfranchised :) 

I suppose the problem/lack of understanding is that a main point of my
talk was that we (i.e., non-code-writers) can't generally 'force'
anything on coders. Since above all else the project needs working
code[1], coders have a bigger stick than the rest of us. That's fine.
That doesn't mean the rest of us aren't important, nor does it mean we
can't earn the right to have our voices heard. It just means we have to
work slightly harder to reach that point, since we have to win leverage
and influence by working at it in ways that coders do not. 

Bottom line is that I earned my position within the project by doing
very non-code stuff. So it's quite possible for anyone to do it. That
doesn't mean we get it on a silver platter, for better or for worse.

Luis

[1] I can QA unmaintained code until the end of time, but that won't get
GNOME $NEXT out the door- only coders can fix/release/make improvements
in the code. So, in that sense, a coder is more important than I am. I'm
only important (in that framework) if I convince coders that they want
QA- and I have done that, so I'm important. a11y and other groups
/could/ do that- i18n definitely has, for example (more so than QA,
even), and usability is moving in that direction. But it's a continual
process for each group and must be earned.