Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 16:25:51 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> Cc: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [bsd-advocacy] Re: Draft: Proposed FreeBSD PubRelproject Charter Message-ID: <3E39C28F.F26DC60E@mindspring.com> References: <007501c2c898$b2fbdd30$0502000a@sentinel> <3E39B755.34A8253@mindspring.com> <20030130235537.GB758@gothmog.gr>
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Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > I'm not one who likes forcing his opinion on the bsd-advocacy owner(s), > but everyone should either discuss things here (in freebsd-advocacy) > or there (on bsd-advocacy). I'd probably prefer the former list > though, since the freebsd-advocacy list is open to everyone and the > occasional lurker who reads threads but doesn't reply to each and > every post might have things to post that are well thought out and > worthy of mentioning/discussing. I'm really divided on this idea. I like the idea of a FreeBSD-advocacy list that is central, and where there are enough lurkers that some good idea can spark involvement in normally passive observers. On the other hand, I think that an advocacy group needs to hold itself seperate from the project, once it has found a mission or missions for itself. The reason for the seperation, and the reason that my second comment on their proposed charter was, in effect, "Do not make yourselves subservient to the FreeBSD core team", is that the bulk of the people involved in FreeBSD technical developement are unqualified for making decisions relating to PR. In particular, the core team members and the average committers do not value PR work sufficiently to give it, say, the moral equivalent status as "GEOM" or other code-work. For example, no matter who was on a "PR team", it is unlikely that the core team or the release engineers would permit a release schedule, for a -RELEASE version, to be fixed to a date for PR reasons... yet that is almost a requirement to be able to get magazine coverage, which has a 3 month lead time on editorial content. They are also not good at it, or there would not be people stepping up to the plate and pointing to it as a lack that they are willing to expend personal time and effort to correct. Finally, the project, proper, doesn't really see PR as something which is lacking. What this basically means is that any group that's doing PR really needs to focus on "How shall we do this thing?", and not on "Should we do this thing?", and being too closely tied to the project or a "lurker's list" will mean arguments over direction with people not helping put in the actual work. By keeping the discussion in the "advocacy" on freebsd.org list, they would be opening themselves up to arm-chair quarterbacking from just those people who have been so ineffective at PR that the people forming the new group felt the need to form a new group. The other good argument for seperation, to my mind, is that, like the college that has a rowing team, a football team, a baseball team, a fencing team, etc., etc., not all groups will have the same methods or goals, -- neither should they -- but all groups, by their efforts, contribute to the same goal of obtaining new publicity, and often obtain it from non-overlapping sets. I was somewhat annoyed at the list being hosted at Daemon News, but hosting it there is at least a degree of seperation that would otherwise not be there, and it's at least a start on the group of groups that will ultimately be necessary for their mission to be successful, in the long term. Hosting it there is better than a freebsd.org list, in any case. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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