What would make you become an associate member?

129 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
aliasbody
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Beigetreten: 09/14/2012

This is when we understand the real importance of a big and organized community around something. I am not saying that they are disorganized, just that they don't have the same chance (as a market) like Canonical that does really bad unethical stuff (but really bad... really....) and thanks to this have a lot more people around it and a lot more resources for working.

(But I can't say anything bad about Ubuntu, without him I wouldn't be here today, and probably neither do the most of users here... but that's a different point).

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

We need a paid position!

:( unfortunately there isn't enough money to even pull off one full time developer (yet, this may be a bit optimistic).

aliasbody
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Beigetreten: 09/14/2012

Is there really a need for a paid position :S ? In my special case, as a student that as a lot of time free (a lot really), I could do a lot of different work in my spare time just in the hope of helping the community and learning, and now that I will use Trisquel Gnu/Linux as my main distro (when Trisquel 6 is out), it will be even easier.

Help like mine (even if little and with a few knowledges) could help a lot improving the community, Trisquel, and even saving money for donations of "real" development that could help everyone, like the Gnu Projects (Gnash, Gnu IceCat etc...), and even Driver developers :D But it is just my opinion.

Chris

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

There is a lot of work volunteers don't want to do. Managing it all for instance!

This is why we need a paid position. Even if it's just a small amount.

It is the incentive to do what nobody else wants to do.

We also need money for developers. Without developers things don't move forward and most people aren't as altruistic as Rubén.

aliasbody
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Beigetreten: 09/14/2012

And this is why I proposed myself for help xD I think that, if big Gnu/Linux move without a cent at all (for example Arch Linux that even stopped receiving donations), then I think that we (as a community), can become big with just a few or nothing. We (and by "we" I mostly say myself and maybe an important amount of people on the community but not everyone), may not be as experienced as many out there on big communities like Ubuntu but we can do any kind of job just by "love for the t-shirt" (don't really know how to translate this one xD).

I saw that there is always a page explaining almost everything about the idea behind this topic, and also a lot of names sorted out to do some work (which is great), but we need to start and take "profit" of the time some have (I also realise that many people here work at full time, or are students in Universities and because of that don't have enough time).

So all of this to say, by this I am not criticizing anything or anyone, remember that Ubuntu at the same age wasn't that organized as they are now :D (Neither Arch Linux or any other Distribution out there). But, if really no one want to manage then I don't mind doing it (even knowing that in terms of results (and not of time) it is mostly an "I don't know how good I am" then a "It is what I do all day", but I can try my best :D

(All this just to say that, if we can avoid spending money (and I'm not saying that is unnecessary money spent) then we must do it and keep it for other important things (like if the server is attacked and we need time, money, and people to restore everything... and believe that happens one time in a lifetime for every project on the web :D).

Best Regards,
Luis Da Costa

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

If you want to read up on all the posts on the main thread here you'll get a good idea of what we want to do and where we are at.

We need to write up a proposal to Rubén in regards to organization, what we want to do, how it would work, and so on. He has already expressed concerns about doing something like this.

For instance the reliability of the translation efforts and security measures. If we have a volunteer for one language and that volunteer stops or doesn't translate fast enough the site looks bad. So we need multiple volunteers before a language can be added. We need a system in place where someone manages adding people (even if this system involves Rubén; although I think it would be better if it was someone else as Rubén is a very busy individual). Then write some documentation on the requirements for when we will add a language. How is this person going to be approved/who will do that? Will it be a voting system? Or will it just be a system whereby we submit credentials to Rubén?

Anyway. Between the wiki page I linked to and the main thread write a proposal for us. If you do that I'll look it over. Just send me an email. We can then post that proposal to the wiki and let others make suggestions. At which point we can sent it to Rubén.

aliasbody
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Beigetreten: 09/14/2012

I totally agree with you and since we are (still) a "small" community having the same persons helping always and at time could be very difficult (even we can have a lot of concerned people).

Yes but where could we do that ? I mean a lot of things could already have been done (like in my case the Portuguese translation), but there is no place for such a thing, only this page. I thing that what we need to need is a reconstruction of some basic parts in order to make things happen quickly.

For example, why don't use a wiki System like Arch Linux ? It is open to everyone and when someone has something to add they can do it just by login in ! That is amazing in so many ways :D And because of that we have a lot of translator that can do the work, well... when they can. And if they can't and there is someone out there that can do, then they will do it.

For example, imagine that I was here, foot on floor saying "I am here to translate everything to Portuguese" what should I do ? Should I create a post about asking people if they want to contribute ? Should I start translating and sending the files to anyone to see if they agree (even if they will possibly don't have the possibility to see if I really translated well) ?

In my opinion this should work like the patches on the Linux Kernel. We have the coder, then he send it to a responsible, then this responsible confirms it, the community tries it, and then it is sent to Linus Torvalds so he can approve it and put it on this beautiful thing called the Linux Kernel.

We should be able to do the same. Even if I totally understand that a lot of people (more Rubén), can't have the privilege to work at full time on this project.

The first things I think that we should change is :

- The Forum (Voting Topics, Categories, a Section only for development and ideas etc...)
- The Wiki (Something more external an easy to use, in order for people to see how everything can be configured and how everything works (just like the Arch Linux Wiki, or the Ubuntu Wiki).

As for the proposal, it is something like everything I wrote until know or the idea of me helping with anything I could even managing ? (I will start reading all the posts in a few hour, just need to finish something first).

PS: Sometimes I feel (not because of your answers but because of my lack of English grammar) that I'm being more "robust" and "criticizing" that I really am xD I just want to make everyone understand (even if most of the people really don't care and it is totally normal), that I am really in a "war" against everything I hated about proprietary software for years, but never found a community that shared the same ideas as me... And now that I've found, I wanted to help with everything that I could, nothing more, nothing less :D

Best Regards,
Luis Da Costa

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

I'm not sure I understood everything you had to say although I think I get the jist of it. Trisquel is based on Drupal and this forum integrates with it. This is most likely the reason for this particular forum software and wiki.

There are some unusual features that have been added to the site. This could complicate an upgrade. Particularly for an outsider. One of them is a script which turns the forums into a mailing list to which you can subscribe.

I'm betting an upgrade to Drupal 7 would fix many of the issues people have. Would the new Drupal forum software work as well as the one Arch or Ubuntu use? I don't know. The reason I believe Trisquel is not using the forum software that Canonical uses for the Ubuntu forums is that it's non-free. I'm not sure about the forum software Arch uses.

It might be worth investigating Drupal 7 and trying out the newer versions of the forum, wiki, etc along with any other needed modules. It probably wouldn't hurt to also look into the feasibility of integrating non-Drupal forum software. One of the consideration here should be difficulty of maintenance. We don't have a full time web developer. Rubén is from my understanding maintaining the web site himself and appears reluctant to release any control to another. This is completely understandable. There are very few people who have shown to be reliable, able, and committed to the project.

I think what needs to be done is we need to get people working on projects like this even if the output is not used. That shouldn't be seen as a wasted effort. Learning about the software used, implementation, and so forth is a valuable lesson. From which we can go forward regardless of if a particular implementation is used.

To do a new web site there needs to be a list of requirements made and reason for doing it. Right now that would involve Rubén as he is the only one who understands whats involved in the current web site. Something he probably doesn't have time for. Making a list of features/requirements and inquiring with him on it is the way to go forward here.

Some of the other requirements I'd imagine include translation features. How well does forum, wiki, and similar software support it?

I think putting a demo site together would be an excellent idea and then putting forth on the current wiki a set of features/requirements. If those features can be implemented I'm sure Rubén would be much more open to requisitioning control. He has given some control over to others it relation to the translation effort. He's not the only one translating the web site from one language to another.

Andresm

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Beigetreten: 11/21/2010

Hi Chris,

I have been using trisquel for the past year and would like to be an associate member. I tried the paypal thing as I live outside UK. I ran into some problems:

At first my web was set to spanish as I am of spanish nationality. When I went to the paypa thing it obliged me to choose a spanish province to continue. Even though at the top I had said that I was Reino Unido.

I then went back and clicked on the british flag to change to english. I chose United Kingdom and now province changed to State and I seem to need to choose a state in the USA.

How do I sort this out?

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

I'm not sure that I can help here. I'm pretty confident that a paypal representative can though. What I can do is point you to the right place to get an answer. If you click on the following link it should display a phone number for your region:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpscr?cmd=_contact-phone

If that doesn't give you the right phone number then I find it or you can try and force paypal into displaying the country/region yourself through a tweak of the browser preferences:

If you go to Edit -> Preferences -> Languages you can probably force paypal to display the correct language/country.

This might also solve the problem of it giving you different country/language on the paypal membership sign up page.

I hope this helps.

jxself
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Beigetreten: 09/13/2010

Andresm, it's not intuitive but here's what to do: After you click on the "Proceed to PayPal for payment" stop and look at the URL.

https://www.paypal.com/es/cgi-bin/.....

Change es to uk and press return. It loads up stuff for the UK.

jxself
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Beigetreten: 09/13/2010

Of course, I'm still waiting for a non-PayPal option to be available on Trisquel.info. That's what's stopping me from becoming a member (I'm boycotting PayPal.)

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

:) I hope you are contributing in some other way:

Hint: The gift store does not require paypal:

https://trisquel.info/en/store

Neither does ThinkPenguin:

http://libre.thinkpenguin.com

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

I don't think that works for the associate membership. I could be mistaken though. It does appear to work for the donations though.

Andresm

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 11/21/2010

For associate membership avoiding paypal you can always do a direct bank transfer standing order to the spanish acount. I'm sure it can be sorted out.

Thanks for the suggestions for the paypal thing I will look into it.

Andresm

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 11/21/2010

**********************
Your membership was registered correctly, you are now a associate member of the Trisquel Project!

Your much appreciated contribution will continue to guarantee the sustainability of the project. Your membership status will soon be shown in your profile and forum posts, and we will send you your USB key in the next weeks. Contact us to activate your email alias and irc cloak.

Many thanks for your support!

**********************
Done! I do not know what happened. I did jxself suggested but that just sent me to the landing page for UK, I then pressed back a couple of times and it let me choose county (equivalent to province in spain and state in the usa).

So what is this about an email alias and IRC cloak? Do I get an email address name at domain? and an IRC nick? I think I have two or three that I keep loosing password to it would be great.

I feel a bit guilty about the USB but it sounds very cool!

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

We were shooting for 100 members by the end of last year. That didn't happen although it is moving forward slowly but surely.

The email I believe is name at domain

I'm unsure what the IRC nick is all about.

Even though I'm a member I don't have/use either.

SirGrant

I am a member!

I am a translator!

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Beigetreten: 07/27/2010

Here is the information about the email aliases:

It is not really an "email address" as you may be thinking. It is more of an email forwarding address. People send it there and it is just forwarded to another address (similar to the FSF one).

Here is the info about the USB Keys:

First batch of Trisquel USB keys sent.

If you don't need one you could probably decline and you don't have to have one sent to you. Also just FYI this may take a while to get if you do in fact choose to accept it because they are sent out in batches.

Andresm

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 11/21/2010

http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/proposed-policies-procedures-solutions

Contacting me: On this website, mailing list users and usuario (spanish and english) hopefully translator in near future.

Languages: English (UK but sometimes slip to USA) Spanish (spain)

Primary skills: little Translation little programing but little to show for myself. last attempt was using quickly (bazzar + glaze+ python). I am OK with writting instructions for other users.

Bug reporting: I am used to bug reporting on Ubuntu unsure about how to do it in

Availability: I have a job and family. But plan to have at least 30min set apart every Tuesday

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

Make sure you add yourself to the bottom of the above wiki page.

oysterboy

I am a member!

I am a translator!

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Beigetreten: 02/01/2011

> Make sure you add yourself to the bottom of the above wiki page.

I just added myself as well.

Andresm

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 11/21/2010

Done: thought that I needed special access for the wiki.

thanks Sir Grant!

aliasbody
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Beigetreten: 09/14/2012

I added myself to the list :D

systemovich

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Beigetreten: 07/03/2012

Hi Chris,

I could contribute to the Drupal site. I have not worked with Drupal yet, but have set up a Joomla site before. I will just need to get a Drupal book.

I know some HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, C++ and Pascal.

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

Add yourself to the bottom of the wiki here (people who want to volunteer):

https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/proposed-policies-procedures-solutions

One of these days I'm sure I'll go through it.

There is some one who has taken the initiative to work on a new Trisquel site/forums:

http://trisquel-users.com/

It is mostly for demonstration purposes at the moment. We still need to write up a proposal and talk to Rubén (founder and lead developer of the distribution) about anything that really moves forward. We have been discussing the needed features in a new site.

Here is where we have been discussing it:

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/add-sticky-post-forums-explaining-rules-please-please-please-please

We should probably start a new topic though... not sure how it ended up continuing under that topic for so long.

Maybe you can contact the person who started it and work with them on implementing the needed features. I'm pretty confident there is a lot we are missing from the new site. Just taking a look over the old site and you can see many of them.

Having something to show what the volunteers are capable of us is a good start in getting a community organized. Right now we don't really have anybody organizing anything. Rubén doesn't have the time for it and is reluctant to hand control over to anybody. Completely understandable. Most people don't have a commitment or the skills to really take over anything. Amongst other reasons not to (there will at least be an increased workload to transition to a new site for instance-or even just upgrade the current one).

We also have to make it work for Rubén in order for him to pawn it off on some one else or a small team. Even if it goes nowhere I'm certainly going to need help with ThinkPenguin as things move forward. We are working on a new site as well. It's slow though. I don't think I've said this although I may go looking through that list. I'd like to hire some one to help with the new web site we're developing. I have someone doing the majority of it although when he is done there is still going to be work to do... ongoing type stuff. Right now I think the plan is to keep him on for at least a little while.

After that though I'm sure we will need some one. It is pure coincidence Trisquel and ThinkPenguin are based on Drupal. Although it does make things nice and convenient to anybody interested in getting into free software and web development. There are other free software sites I believe which use Drupal and Drupal as a platform is BIG. Really big.

If there are people who have shown commitment, ability, experience, etc it would be a great opportunity to work with Trisquel, ThinkPenguin, and/or others.

Tullia
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Beigetreten: 11/13/2012

Well I'm a member of the FSF now; whether I commit to the distribution depends on a few things.

Community - whether I feel welcome (so far so good) and 'part of the conversation' (I think there's more to a forum, for instance, than just question-and-answer; comradeship perhaps)

Ethics - I'm still figuring out where I stand ethically on some issues, and as we exist in a non-free world, I reserve the right to some flexibility in order to interact with that world. If Free software actively interferes with me making a non-free choice, then I may look elsewhere.

Certainty - While many projects do seem to hinge on the efforts of few or sole key developers, making a long-term and financial commitment to a distribution, I want to feel at least some measure of security that I'm not wasting my efforts.

I think those are the main things. The community one probably should be involved, as to me personally, the social aspect of any activity is very important.

Chris

I am a member!

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

It's really not that hard to get along here if you agree that non-free software is unethical.

The finer details get a bit more challenging. Every one is putting up with some non-free software. If they weren't they would not be able to communicate on this forum. However that doesn't mean everyone is going to put up with non-critical things like Adobe Flash, non-free games, etc.

These are generally not critical to life. However if you lived by that purely you wouldn't be on these forums either. Last I checked you can still survive in this world without a computer.

Do what you can to help even if you don't think you can survive with a completely free distribution. Providing financial assistants to free software projects benefits you and everyone else regardless of the distribution you use. Free software solves many of the problems users face on GNU/Linux (and other non-free systems).

Contributing to Trisquel and other projects working on free software ultimately helps with reducing our communities dependencies. It doesn't really matter your position to benefit. Even non-free advocates who think free software is bad ultimately benefit.

If you would otherwise have paid for a computer with Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X or some other non-free program you really should feel an obligation to contribute something. Which it sounds like already are.

I think I figured out once before that it was about $10 USD a month every free software user should be contributing minimally. However that is only in comparison to what a typical non-free user contributes to software development on a monthly basis. Given all the factors you should really consider contributing much more. 10X that I don't feel is unreasonable. However given that we are not all with the same abilities you ultimately have to figure out what you can afford to contribute.

Tullia
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Beigetreten: 11/13/2012

>It's really not that hard to get along here if you agree that non-free software is unethical.

Being social is more than just 'getting along' though. I realize this may be irrelevant to many people, as for most software is just a service that they purchase and they may see free software the same way; however for me personally this is a factor. (I got the impression you were collecting information about people's motivation).

>If you would otherwise have paid for a computer with Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X or some other non-free program you really should feel an obligation to contribute something. Which it sounds like already are.

Yes. I observed previously, that "I don't mind paying for my beer". If I stay with the project I'll contribute. I already contribute many hours of work time to another distribution.

Chris

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

Your right. The feedback was the main thing here.