Vision for Kubuntu

[Xen]

Óscar Fuentes schreef op 25-10-2016 2:29:
> Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> writes:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> On those public venues, which are supposed -- at least that's what you
>> would think -- to be places where people can freely talk, free talk is
>> actually not allowed and all messages are continually monitored to
>> comply with the mission.
> 
> This is expected and reasonable. It is what I see on most, if not all,
> projects that I follow, unless the admins are asleep at the wheel (or
> simply too busy to do their duty.)
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> It is virtually impossible for Kubuntu to become involved as e.g. a
>> documentator, because there are no freely available places where you
>> can document. Free spots for "little work" are not available, and
>> hence only "bigger positions" are up for offer, that require real
>> commitment and big tasks to perform, effectively.
> 
> Do you mean that if you submit a patch adding a small piece of
> documentation or simply correcting some typos, it will be
> rejected/ignored?

Kubuntu itself is not a source of a great amount of documentation in 
that sense, because it derives most from upstream. Naturally if you go 
directly to upstream, you won't have to deal with the whole Kubuntu 
situation at all.

I am sure that if there was Kubuntu documentation they would allow small 
patches against it.

I mean more that the best way to get involved with any community project 
is to start to perform small duties. The most agreeable duty anyone can 
fulfill is extending e.g. wiki documentation. That is something that is 
"free to do".

This opportunity however barely exists. If I look at it again, they now 
point you to a "Trello" board that is filled with rather difficult tasks 
or for which you really need to be "part of the team" -- again, a clear 
separation between "internal" and "external" authority or space, the 
company vs. its clients, you might say.

If you read on you realize the wiki is only about the Kubuntu _project_ 
but not about using the system in any kind. For that is apparently the 
separate documenation site. Which is not a wiki at all but a fixed 
documentation page/site which you can't readily edit unless, probably, 
you become part of a dedicated documentation team.

This documentation however is so simple that it's practically worthless; 
it's the type of manual that people don't read (who reads a manual?) and 
just skip and start using the product regardless. I guess for some who 
are completely new it would give a quick overview, but the same quick 
overview (of software, for instance!) could be had by just checking out 
your application menu!!!

There is no place whatsoever where you could insert personal remarkts, 
or stuff that doesn't currently yet work, it is too polished for that!

So the raw, random, arbitrary nature of community content has no place 
there. It's a polished thing and ... by that nature, practically 
irrelevant (in this case) but the information *I* would be looking for 
is not there, and, I can also not insert.

There is simply no community presence, anywhere. The system is not 
designed like that. The system is designed to be the product of a 
company and you generally do not change Microsoft Windows documentation 
either (but you go elsewhere to promote your fixes).

Besides, why would they even want to accept patches if you are not part 
of the team? They want you to become part of the team first before you 
can submit any patches. That's the model of operation, because if you 
don't, they will see you as that outsider that has no business changing 
things (or something like that).



> What people do is to post *at* *most* one message on the mailing list
> saying "I'm starting a new project blah blah blah, follow-ups to X". 
> But
> it is unacceptable to use the original project's communication channels
> for promoting your own project or to use them as if they were your own.

Most of what I would do personally is to talk about the (a) lack of the 
current system and then conjecture how the lack could be filled or the 
gap could be resolved.

If it is not to do with Kubuntu, why would you talk here, right ? 
(Including the forums).

So it's not about taking a pine forest and then planting a one year old 
oak tree there.

It's usually about dropping a seed for some shrub.

If you say "Use them as if they were your own" then apparently I am not 
part of it. This again, indicates, that there is no community.

You are either part of the in-group or part of the out-group but there 
is nothing else. There are no shades of gray.

There is no blending. Apparently, I can not call it "my own" even in the 
smallest part.


There is only this aggressiveness that they don't want you to intrude on 
their territory, so to speak.

That is called "hostile" and "putting up fences".

Generally the way you get into a line of work or anything is that you 
end up chatting to the people who do it and they invite you in. I was 
offered a job the other day on the street. Not because I applied, but 
because we were talking about computer software and engineering. There 
was a "space" where chat was "free".

Not that I could accept readily, my health is too bad to take up any 
positions and I cannot even travel at this point. I cannot ensure food 
in the fridge, let alone take on a job for which I need to travel each 
day, know what I'm saying?

These people here blame me for not "doing any work" when "doing any 
work" requires you to hold a job here to begin with. It requires you to 
become an employee first. It requires you to take on responsibilities. 
It requires you to promise a certain presence and availability.

I cannot even promise any continued existence, and this icks them, I 
don't know.

I am not healthy enough to do the sort of thing they require or I would 
probably long since be working for that employer (or any other). And the 
thing I *am* capable of, is not accepted. What can I do about it?

I do not have the health to get the smallest thing done currently, and 
they only want, they do not give. They give you nothing (in terms of 
allowance, friendliness) but constantly want your labour.

Basically they have no understanding at all for what a lesser 
priviledged person may be in. They judge a rich western person with food 
in his belly the same as a poor African who has internet access once a 
week, as a matter of saying. They think everyone is the same, has the 
same abilities, the same capabilities, the same circumstances. It's a 
moral deficiency, what can I say.

They think it is "ill will" when I cannot even make it to the freaking 
hospital to get an operation done, because if I have been operated I 
won't be able to take care for myself even more even though the current 
impediment is the biggest problem in my life. After operation I can't 
make it out of my house, cannot even make it INTO my house, so I suffer 
without recourse BUT I am to do their work for them.

It's about as petty as it can get. They think their concerns and 
trepidations are so important.

Someone else has no food. Someone else is dying. But, of course, 
Kubuntu's rules and regulations are more important than anything else.

I guess it is an affliction of the complacent west, where people shield 
each other off from the misery of others and live in their own bubble so 
much that they cannot even *fathom* what another person may be going 
through.

It does not even occur to them that, in fact, another person may in fact 
not be capable of performing the duties due to circumstances. But their 
project is of course more important than that person.

The great little hobby company...

Whereas in the street even I am offered more, as we have seen. A guy who 
sees how bad I can walk and he offers me some .NET programming job, 
well, whatever.

I don't need a job although I would love to have one, but that's not 
what it's about.

Your vision is friendliness, well you are not friendly. Period.

Friendly computing but we mouth everyone off. Great.

And I don't need anyone's pity all of a sudden but a little 
understanding (for whomever it is) would be great.

Insults all those Linux people who use Linux and who run into those 
problems while she's at it. Because they "don't get their hands dirty" 
or however you want to frame it (I'm not reading back to see the exact 
quote). This insults their intent, insults their goodwill, when it is 
the people themselves who refuse to offer jobs (in that sense) and who 
even refuse patches when they are sent!!!

Have you never seen how hard it is to get a patch accepted if you are 
part of the out-group?

So it's not enough to "do the job", you must also be a teammember, you 
must be an employee.

"It's the people who do the work that get to design the systems". Well I 
thought designing systems was work!

You think design is some kind of free exercise that comes flying to you 
on clouds of dismay and ease? You snap your fingers and it's there?

Or that it's the "reward" for having been a good employee for 3 years?

No wonder design in Linux is so terrible then, if it is relegated to the 
shadows.

Design is frowned upon. It is a do-ocracy, but not a think-ocracy. You 
are supposed to do before you think. No wonder then, that you can never 
find any design documents anywhere. There is hardly any design being 
done in the first place. Scarcely will you ever find some architectural 
overview about anything. It is certainly not at the fore-front of 
people's attention.


>> Design precedes implementation. So by blocking that first step, the
>> 2nd step also never arises and you are left without recourse, or, as
>> is said in Spanish "sin remedio".
> 
> I know that, in theory, it should be that way, but that's not my
> experience about how things work. Every now and then someone appears
> with a significant contribution and *then* it is discussed. Sometimes 
> it
> is rejected outright, sometimes changes are required but those are 
> never
> implemented and the work is lost...

That would be fine if the platform should not be the community from 
which the changes arise.

If you can completely stay away from the project (community) and can get 
your work perfectly done without any interaction whatsoever... sure that 
would be great....

In practice people need interaction, at least with someone.

So perhaps if you have a healthy work environment, you have a job in 
which you can also do these things, and then you can offer your results 
in one go, then you don't need the "community".

But I say again: you are thrown out of forums if you do this thing. If 
you discuss anything.

And of course a picture says more than a 1000 words. And a completed 
project says more still.

Where is this mighty "community" of us now?

The only person I have ever met in Kubuntu was on IRC and our 
communication was shut down _very_ rapidly.



> Project maintainers are not prone to
> enter on lengthy discussions because they know that most of the time it
> is a waste of time. They very much prefer facts instead of words.

This basically implies that you have to do all of the work and 
implementation yourself without aid from the developers, you realize?

> Moreover, while refusing to enter on a philosophical discussion says
> nothing wrong about the maintainer (although the would-be interlocutor
> may think otherwise) ignoring a patch without proper review will
> seriously damage her image on the community.

Maintainer and developer are different roles.

For a maintainer it makes sense not to do that, it is not a development 
role.

When people engage in debate they are trying to reach developers, not 
maintainers, in that sense.

In essence, the "maintainer" only has to deal with completed projects, 
things that are ready for submission, that can then be rejected or 
accepted or rejected with comments, that sort of stuff.

However many times we are looking for help and we are also looking to 
submit something in stages: first the idea, then the design, then the 
implementation, and so on.

Why? Because otherwise WE would be wasting our time on someone that 
doesn't want it anyway.

So this strategy doesn't actually "work" in the sense of creating good 
software. I mean the strategy of the maintainers that don't want to do 
any development work.

What it basically means is that the interest of even cooperating or 
interoperating with the maintainer becomes less and less because the 
maintainer (or developer) doesn't want to be part of the activity that 
results IN the product. They then do not become a shareholder, a 
stakeholder.

This results in MORE forks because interoperation with the original 
project is scarcely possible and if someone is not willing to humour you 
on the way towards the end product, you kinda lose the interest of even 
sharing your result with them.

I originally simply wanted to say that they may not ignore your patch 
but they don't actually have to give it a good consideration. This is a 
façade to simply comply with expected behaviour without giving the 
submitter any leeway.

What I mean is that it reminds me of the debates between Bohr and 
Einstein on Bohr's model of the atom. Bohr "submitted" his model at some 
convention and Einstein "gave him hell" or at least refused to accept 
the model and came up with rebuttal after rebuttal. In the end Bohr was 
able to refute them all and Einstein had to admit he had no arguments 
left.

This is the same process you see with those patches:

- the maintainer tries to prove that your patch has any flaws
- your task is to rebute all of that and prove that the accusations do 
not hold.

Basically your task is to withstand the "heat" you are given. But this 
is not a cooperative environment, of course. Bohr could not "go to 
Einstein" and ask him "help me to develop my model". No, he had to do 
that in his own time.

But that's not community, and that's the whole point I am making.



> The communication channels are not different from other project
> resources (web hosting, version control systems, bug tracking, etc.)
> Taking measures for ensuring that those resources are being used
> according to the project's goals is reasonable. If they think that an
> user is either mounting a revolt, recruiting people for a competing
> project or simply creating noise, it is their duty to stop that user's
> activity.

And that is not community, is what I'm saying.



> I'm afraid that you have the wrong idea about what an Open Source
> project is. Catch phrases like "everybody is welcomed", "we are a
> community", etc. have not the broad meaning that you seem to attach to
> them.

And that is my point. This is not any more community than e.g. on 
Synology's forums, even less so, I would add.

"Kubuntu is a community of ..." no, not any more than that "Synology is 
a community of ...".

I usually do not have an issue with what is. I have an issue with 
proclaiming falsehoods about what is.

Because they lead to false attributions. "You do not want to do any 
work". Pardon me? Can you go insult someone else please?

If you refuse to give someone a job or allow him to do any work, and as 
a consequence he does no work for you, that is your issue, not mine.

In the real world that does not pose as "enlightened" or "of higher 
ethical standards" (such as around "open source" and "free software") 
these issues do not arise, you see.

Well in a sense, they do. People desperately try to get a job and then 
they are still insulted for not doing any.

Because the people do not see how they are getting insulted and treated, 
rejected and thrown out, at their prospective employers.

And perhaps we are all responsible for our level of success in the 
world.

Yet if "competition" is basically the hall-mark of "open source", then 
"open source" is not any more enlightened than the rest of the corporate 
world.

If "mine not yours" is the hall-mark and credit of open source, then it 
is not any more enlightened than the rest of the corporate world.

If "you are only welcome if you help us sell more, and you are basically 
just a tool for us selling our products" then there is not any more 
community here than anywhere else in the corporate world.

If image marketing is just as important here as in the corporate world.

If people lie just as much about what their product is and what flaws it 
doesn't have.

Then that is the moral bankrupt of the whole idea of "free software" or 
"open source is a better way of doing things".

Because in practice it means you are just as ill-equipped to change 
Kubuntu as you are in changing Microsoft Windows.

Or any other open source project out there. Not all of them!!!

I have certainly had debates with developers. You know which ones are 
the most amenable to influence? The most agreeable to welcoming you?

It's the ones hosted at kernel.org.

One at least two occasions they have said "Sure, I will fix this issue 
for you."

Or "you are right that this needs to be fixed, but it is difficult ...".

Perhaps because they have rejected GPL3, and stick to GPL2, I don't 
know.

The kernel and its associated projects have more community than I have 
found elsewhere in the Linux world.

They are more welcoming. They are happy to see you.

And you know what, I have an issue with the mechanisms of the corporate 
world, and that's why I don't like it here so much, I guess.

I mean the broader landscape of people who do not even understand what 
Linux actually is and what the opinions of Torvalds actually are.

You will find time and time again, that the "Linux fanboys" are actually 
in disagreement with Linus Torvalds!

It's also the only project that accepts a wicked number of patches. But 
anyway. Most Linux projects are just corporate projects using free 
resources, or something of the kind. Some 80% of real Linux development 
is probably done using paid employees. The rest are just fighting among 
eachother.