Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your suggestions. I appreciate your enthusiasm and I will certainly keep your suggestions in mind when implementing anything.
Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.pro writes:
How do other people feel about that point?
FSFE's "About" page says the organization's mission is to empower users. Personally, I feel that setting an example that other organizations can replicate will help achieve that goal and doing things that other people can easily copy is a powerful form of leadership.
Well, the statement is a political statement. That does not mean, the FSFE will enable everyone personally by providing software to them, but rather that the FSFE wants to get to the point where using Free Software is the norm. Part of that strategy can be what you mentioned, but the FSFE is not a technical organization; it is a political and educational organization about technology.
I think many of your suggestions make sense and we (the blog hackers) and probably others would love to implement some of them. However, the problem is that your suggestions mean a major change from how things are currently done. Your suggestions also mean major work to even just achieve these kinds of goals. We do not have the manpower to do that right now and the best thing we can do is look at a system and take small steps to making it more maintainable. Defining service plans and deciding which database we want to use or even changing the whole infrastrucure setup before we even know what is feasible, is not a good idea.
And to be completely honest here, another reason why your suggestions are sometimes a bit problematic is that you are suggesting other people implement them. If they were small or easily implemented changes, that would be fine, but if someone asks for major changes to the infrastructure, they should be prepared to implement those changes. That does not mean you shouldn't make suggestions, but you keep on pushing them after people tell you why they don't think your suggestions are feasible right now and I invited you to the blog team, but you still only make more suggestions here on this list. I understand you're probably busy, but you're coming off a little bit like telling other people how to do their jobs (not because of one suggestion, but because you keep pushing them).
That being said, I really do appreciate your suggestions and wheneve we make any decisions, I will think about what you wrote here and see if any of it is applicable.
Happy hacking! Florian