Hello Gunnar, On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 01:14:24PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: > But... Most of us joined when we were perfectly classifiable as > "young". So, something has clearly changed in a project that attracted > twenty-somethingers twenty years ago...? > > So, Sean says something quite similar to what I was thinking: > > [...] > > Yes. The Debian culture is cast around older tools. We work mostly via > (plain-text!) email and IRC. And yes, I will argue (and even prove, as > we did for an online conference ~10 years ago, where IRC was proven > better than any other alternatives because of many small details) that > they are much better suited to our work than that newfangled, > mobile-friendly, over-AJAXy technologies that lure youngsters > nowadays. I really doubt we will change our use of tools, but that is > an important hurdle to attract newcomers: Our way of communication > smells like it's 1995. And we like it to be uphill both ways. Although I agree with you that our older-fashioned tools are probably putting some younger people off, I just wanted it to be clear that I was making a slightly different point in my previous message. The contrast I was invoking with many (not all) projects on GitHub was simply (i) the lag time between submitting work and getting feedback, and (ii) the number of revisions required before work is accepted. > When many of us joined (in my case, early 2000s), Free Software was a > strongly counter-cultural way to do something creative and challenge > the system. When I started getting involved with it (mid 1990s), it > was something our teachers never even imagined. That's a great way to > lure young people in... But nowadays, we are the teachers and, to a > given extent, we are the system — Free software has been there since > always. Free software runs the biggest enterprises in the world. What > is there that attracts young minds to us? Our superior package > management, or our beautiful policies? This is a very interesting thought. Thanks for sharing it. -- Sean Whitton
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