Re: GitLab access

[David Kastrup]

Valentin Villenave <valentin@villenave.net> writes:

> On 5/28/20, Aaron Hill <lilypond@hillvisions.com> wrote:
>> In some ways, this is akin to a job interview
>
> Gosh, I really hope it isn’t!!  My apologies if you’ve been seeing it that 
> way.
>
>> It is counter-productive for me to use my
>> time and talents to fill a role that does not need filling.
>
> That’s hardly been the way our community works; the only era were
> there were “roles” was nearly a decade ago when Graham tried to put
> together a bug triaging team and a doc editing team -- since then,
> we’ve happily gone from the cathedral to the bazaar again.

That is a rather positive spin on "since then, organisational efforts
have fallen apart with many areas no longer getting the necessary
attention".

It's always been a voluntary effort for everyone involved and people
chose what they wanted to do rather than get assigned to it.  I did not
see it as a bad thing that Graham maintained a list of efforts that
wanted to be doing, but it's not like anybody was forced to do anything.
I think it rather saved people efforts finding and identifying their
place rather than otherwise.

And it did not involve job interviews and role assignments either: he
defined roles, but people picked their choice from there.

> I wouldn’t think of it as a “role to fill” so much as a “this may give
> you additional ways to lend a hand whenever and however you feel like
> it”.  That’s all: no formalized “role”, no expectations to fulfill and
> --dear God-- no job interview.  (And that’s certainly the way I’m
> contributing myself these days, in between discouragement phases.)
>
> I have no doubt your knowledgeability and helpfulness will always be
> much appreciated no matter the venue (-user list, -devel, bugtracker,
> code reviewing, doc editing or merge requests) and, personally
> speaking, the more we see of you the better.  But of course, that’s
> entirely up to you and may vary from time to time depending on your
> free time and motivation; these are, after all, the only two
> ingredients Free Software is made of.

-- 
David Kastrup