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The Increasing Importance of Community
Jono Bacon writes "With the success of Ubuntu and Fedora, and the advent of OpenSuSE and Freespire, are businesses and distributions paying more attention to the community? The Increasing Importance of Community discuss this change in focus. What do you all think? Is the community now more of a priority?"
It's a novel idea but "Communities of Practice" are now an enforced thing to take part in where I work. That's right, these CoPs are supposed to give us an opportunity to partake in idea creation and discussion
If I take the word "businesses" to mean literally any kind of business (not just that one operating system maker we all know and love), then I'd propose something like General Motors. Do you think General Motors values community within their company? Probably not. I'm sure they think about local communities but I doubt they're concerned with the communities within their company. That was just an example, I have nothing for or against GM.
Being able to post on a forum (anonymously, if you prefer) about anything from your working conditions to an idea you had is vital to the happiness of the workers. However, I've had bosses that I've pitched this to who just read it as a waste of company time--they feared addicts working the threads 24/7 (much like I do on Slashdot). I would prefer if they would see it as an investment in idea exchanges and employee satisfaction. Ha! That's not their concern!
Back to the original topic, I think that Linux distributions should be more concerned about their corner of the market. Microsoft is their competition. They make an amazing operating system. They aren't going to win the casual computer user by creating a community. They will win them through marketing and raising awareness. It's a cold hard thing to say but I think most of the developers for Linux should be concentrating on educating users about what they can provide. I learned about Linux in college from a friend but, looking back, there's really no reason why some flash advertisement on the side of a website couldn't have done the same.
If you're looking for reasons to get new users,
"Tired of forking money over to Microsoft?"
would probably be more effective than
"Join a community of people who will become abrasive if you're not at their level of intelligence!"
Now, if you're looking at keeping the users involved with the OS and the development of it, this community thing is the answer. I just don't think Linux distros risk losing that support. Their fanbase is extremely solid--the problem is that it is minute compared to Microsoft's.
My work here is dung.
Very much like like politicians do, businesses make an enormous show of letting it be know how much they listen to "the community" all the while screwing thier customers/the-community anytime they can get away with it if they think they can make more money doing it.
.... PS3 .... uhhhh shinnyyy!!!"]
<rant>
It's all part of the growing awareness by businesses that the world is full of blind-following, short-memory, fanboy, brand-fanatic idiots which, as long as they are being fed plenty of PR, will keep buying (not to mention singing praises to) crummy products even when they feel THAT sharp pain in their backsides.
["Sony rootkit, Sony bad, Sony bad!
</rant>
I don't think we should ever underestimate the value a community can create for an operating system. I think the Mac is a great example of this.
Not to knock ubuntu, fedora, freespire, and opensuse, but the Debian community has been around since 1993. It is a highly evolved community with established processes for handling the politics, policy, and code developed for it. It is interesting that Debian isn't even mentioned by the OP. The Debian community, IMHO, is the model for everything else.
Let the users find the bugs and develop the community version of the OS and take everything that works well and put it into your commercial offering. Seems to work for RedHat so far. But then again, they already had a strong community to begin with. Might work well for SuSE too. But Linspire? We'll see...
Without the Linux Community, I would never have been able to properly set up Ubuntu on my computer. It's nice to know that strangers are willing to get together and help complete newbs like myself get started with Linux.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
The psychology and social structure of a bunch of disparate programmers who are not on your payroll is a pill just too difficult to swallow, and one that is usually farmed to the bottom of the 'lets do this' pile.
Are we all just difficult pills? Or are we the cure to the boring workplace?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But one that will help you fix your product, not just tell you what they like and don't like. And they'll do tech support for free, too.
that has nothing to do with the success of fedora, the fedora foundation was trying to be a legal entity to handle the legal aspect of the distribution and it was determined it was too cumbersome to be effective
http://fedoranews.org/cms/node/583
Supplies!