Re: trying to do awesome and risking to fail
Hi!
Sune Vuorela <nospam@vuorela.dk> writes:
> So, over the last years I have seen a Debian where it among the people
> is much more important to avoid to fail than trying to do awesome
> stuff.
While I subscribe to the 'avoid failure whenever you can' school of
thought, I do not wish to hold on to that thought at all costs. We do
need to risk it at times, and that may or may not result in falling flat
on our face.
If we do fail - so what? We'll learn. Care *must* be taken though, that
if things are going to fail, let it do so early, when it hurts less. Or
better yet, if it looks like it's going to end badly, look back and see
what were wrong, and correct the course. We have tons of eyes in the
project, if even a fraction of them cares about a particular project,
we'll have quite many opinions, viewponts and ideas, we'll see and know
where things go wrong.
In short, failure will happen, we have to take that into account, but
that should not stop us from doing awesome stuff, whatever that awesome
stuff would be.
> Focussing on not failing is helping ensuring to stay mediocre. And not
> doing awesome.
While I believe one can do awesome stuff and not stay mediocre even when
trying very hard not to fail, that's a rare thing indeed.
> So, how can we make debian do awesome stuff?
By not being afraid to try new things. For this, we'll likely need the
backing of a DPL who feels the same, because that gives a more
comfortable background for others aswell. Perhaps someone who's not
bound by years-long exposure to a management style that tries to avoid
all kinds of failure. We need initiators who are not afraid of
bruises. If that includes the DPL, so much the better!
There are a couple of ideas and plans in my platform, that I hope fall
into the 'do awesome stuff' category. As far as I see, the plan of
focusing much more on non-packaging contributors is one of these risky
plans. I can easily see it fail. But nevertheless, I believe it *is*
worth the risk, because if it succeeds, that's going to be big.
--
|8]
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