2009/3/27 Spiro Harvey spiro@knossos.net.nz:
"required"? How do you figure anything is *required* of volunteers? Show me your support contract.
If you're worried that CentOS is "late" or is stopping you from fulfilling your own contractual obligations, perhaps you should stop being a tight-arse and pay for RedHat support.
When you pay nothing, you have no right to expect anything. Unless they're your slaves, and I'm pretty sure that's not the case here.
And as long as CentOS stays a relevant distro the pressure (not only from me) will continue to raise.
This is just rude.
I think you're over-reacting or maybe just misunderstanding what I believe the OP was trying to put across.
Personally, even when I volunteer to do something, I do my best to do a good job of it. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing it right, paid or otherwise. So even on a personal level, there are "requirements" and "pressure". If you are organising a charity event, would you accept a team of helpers who may or not may not show up simply because they are "volunteers"?
Now, I don't think any of us here are demanding the CentOS to meet strict deadlines or some corporate standards of performance here. Nobody's saying the CentOS developers can't take a vacation, can't fall sick, etc.
If you read our posts, most of us are wondering where did the snags occur, how we can help to ease such problems, how we can help prevent these from recurring. These are issues that must be tackled if we want the CentOS project to flourish. Like mbneto said, as things grow, pressure & expectations will increase.
I don't think we want to see the team get frustrated and give up due to these pressures or expectations. One of the best way to deal with expectations/pressure is good communications. It doesn't even matter if the communications is that there are delays due to personal issues. People read it, people understand and nobody bugs the team about what's going on, they will feel less pressured.
Similarly, if there's a way for us as non-development-savvy folks to contribute our resources, it would also help relieve pressure on the team.
All we are trying to achieve with this discussion, I believe, is to identify problem areas, see if we can help out. So as to keep the project "fun" for the developers to continue and not one day burn out because they feel so unsupported, unappreciated and harrassed.