Re: Question to all: Outreach
* John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> [2020-03-18 10:26]:
> > As a former Outreachy intern myself (2015) I can tell you that it the
> > stipend has helped me to invest time to find my way around Debian, time
> > during which otherwise I would have had to earn a living elsewhere and
> > would never have gotten involved further with Debian.
> With all due respect, but I find this a bit pretentious. The vast
> majority of people who are getting involved with open source are
> initially not being paid for that.
That reminds me of a remark I made recently when talking about
Outreachy in the context of Debian. First, I should say that I agree
with Ulrike that some people won't be able to spend time learning
about FOSS if they are not paid through a stipend. Just think of
people in Asia or Africa who don't have the luxury of "spare time" we
in the west often have.
Anyway, without going into the pros or cons of Outreachy, my remark
was something like:
So we pay people to work on Debian for a few months? And then? Then
they get the opportunity to work on Debian for free!
Compare that to someone working on Outreachy for the Linux kernel
where a full-time, paid job from Intel, IBM, etc will likely await
them afterwards.
So Outreachy might help some people get involved in Debian, but do we
have a compelling "career path" for them to stay involved afterwards?
Obviously Ulrike did stay around, but what about others?
(we = not necessarily the Debian project, but the wider Debian ecosystem)
--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/
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