Sat, 17 Feb 2007

SkyCon: But I Don't Code...

There's a huge body of people who contribute in a very valuable way to the Open Source community, but they don't code. Alan Cox detailed some of the roles that these people play and how they make a contribution that is every bit as valuable as the people who write the code.

Documentation - it's critically important and we don't have enough.
Translation and Localisation - being able to use a computer
Management - Linus, by his own admission, is a manager. He spends more time looking at other people's work than he does writing code at this stage.
Testing - we should have some more.
Standards Compliance
IT and Infrastructure maintenance - managing systems, the git and cvs servers, mailing lists and servers.
Lawyers and Legal - gplviolations.org is only possible because at least one lawyer is involved. GPL
Media and Press - if people don't know about what's available, they cannot find it to use it.
Lobbying - it's vital that we have people to bring relevant issues to the fore, such as privacy, software patents, standards compliance and regulation.
Artists and graphic design - to make the desktop and fonts look nice.

Alan's 'did you know' pet fact of the talk: Did you know that if your load average gets above 2048, it will wrap?

Recording of the talk, Ogg Vorbis format

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posted at: 12:59 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry