Oh wow, you went to Burlington VT? I was just there last summer, visiting some friends and making new ones... ^^ it's a beautiful place.

This is a very spiffy flyer, informative yet simple enough for an average user to get. Though shouldn't GIMP have a place on there too?

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-Manager, *DeviantOS-tans -- a dA OS-tan club
-Historic computer enthusiast and proud future Multician
-My I Can Has Cheezburger

Yes, I live in Boston, MA most of the time. But my family-in-law live up there and have encouraged us to get a break from the city every so often.

Gimp... yes... I was thinking about how to balance the programs list. Double sided flyers are also an interesting idea since there is an existing sheet somewhere that shows each FOSS tool compared to each proprietary program.

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-- DoctorMO --

Ah, this is very nice and a visible improvement over the original one you posted a while ago. I definitely like how the programs are spelled out this time -- and while I do agree with Bella that squeezing in a GIMP one is worthwhile, it would be more beneficial to plan for that second page you mentioned so you can suggest additional FOSS software that can be helpful to people across all platforms.

Some titles I can think of are:

GIMP
Scribus
GnuCash/Homebank
VLC
Stellarium
Blender
Kompozer
Filezilla
Avidemux
Virtualbox
And I imagine some games

And yes, I think it's very important to pay attention to the discourse used, meaning that "cooperative" does convey a better example of who we are than,... well,... whatever we're called now. "Community" kinda works but has an inherently non-commercial and second-hand slant to it, as in "the community pitched in to make this neat little software for you because you're poor".

"Cooperative" also sounds better at driving the point that this is a collaborative effort that MUST be maintained by active participation, or else the rewards for all won't be so great.

Lately my KGD buddies and I were chatting about ways to get more themes in KGoldRunner, and I pointed out that, technical and artistic issues aside, I believe that a huge cause for such a low submission of custom themes and levels or even comments about the game was the result of:

A) Users who may still have a proprietary conception of software, as in the buy it, play it and only contact anyone if there are problems. Hence, its not only easier but also acceptable for them to do nothing else with the game.

B) As a desktop game, the generally assumption is that it is quick and simple and not meant to be anything overly ambitious. Especially for players in the A category above, it may never occur to them that the game is a work in progress and that it needs THEIR help to be even better.

C) At the moment it's a little inconvenient to ask for help, suggest new things, upload new stuff or even find out what's going on. You know my own reluctance to avoid mailing lists and IRC (which the KDE people do mercilessly as well, much to my chagrin ), and I can assure you there are people far worse than I. So either they might feel intimidated/discouraged to be part of this community, or the notion of it is so well hidden in areas that non-technical users would normally not dig into that they may never even REALIZE they are part of a software cooperative just by using the stuff.

But that's an issue that really affects desktop software in general -- unlike, say, simple but cute games tied to popular social sites like Facebook (and encouraging hundreds and thousands of custom submissions by fans), desktop software more often than not has no visible community/cooperative tied to it, so its perception is bound to be more claustrophobic.

For my problem, I'm thinking of a second optional side or flyer which simply details all the different software.

For your problem, you need to bring the people to the people through your games. Have you seen how many Battle for Wesnoth addons there are? It's because they are able to build a community inside the game it's self.

Otherwise how else are you to be driven by pride and a want to help or a want to show off your skill? so many human things are driven by our reaction to other people. Your KDE pals should be made aware of the advantage of bringing the internet to the desktop, instead of constantly thinking of the internet as a web browser window into another land.

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-- DoctorMO --

Oh, and I was going to ask one of the artists we know if they could draw up a vector icon for this concept of "software cooperative", someone who's good with inkscape and doesn't mind working with me on it.

any ideas?

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-- DoctorMO --

hehe, actually that's precisely what I suggested [though not in so few words]

And in theory its not difficult, if only because the latest build already promotes the so-called "social desktop" through plasmoids -- so why not apply that concept (plus the excellent aggregate bug tracker system, and leveraging available local and web-based technology, such as wikis and comment/rating galleries) and marry in micro communities within each individual program itself. Instead of expecting the user to scour the web [in a separate browser] for 6 different contribution/discussion points, all six of those [in compact form] would be collected in a single interface that slides in at the push of a button, and at least thematically looks like a natural extension of the program itself

That way, participation (even if its as simple as a like it/hate it survey) is literally one click away and also very obvious. And at the click of this button, said person can be made easily aware that there is a bustling "community" behind this, and that thanks to a visible Help Wanted list (along with active discussions per), there is clearly stuff that he/she can do.

I'm actually hoping to create a graphical mock-up of this concept. Even if the people I'm currently talking to aren't comfortable with the idea, others might. And I'm sure you would.

Well me, yes, I was rather hoping I'd get to steal you back to work on some ubuntu learning course materials (art side of things), but it looks like your nee deep in your own lovely revolution

Basically this is the same fight I have with the OAuth people, they believe that the web browser is the only trusted desktop app for usernames and passwords. Where as I believe it's the least trusted. They think I'm mad for signing in users outside of the desktop and telling their OAuth system to go flog it's self.

But that's people for you, you tell them that the internet will be the desktop and they think the browser will be the operating system. Not thinking that perhaps the browser is just a well intentioned, but misguided extension to the desktop right now because of windows OS. If it wasn't for that unmovable operating system, we'd have been able to stick parts of the internet into the desktop by now and be quite happily integration local and cloud data without all this "everythign on the cloud" nonsense.

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-- DoctorMO --

Oh wow, Boston! I live in a major Boston suburb called New Hampshire. xD

And a comparison sheet would be really helpful.

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-Manager, *DeviantOS-tans -- a dA OS-tan club
-Historic computer enthusiast and proud future Multician
-My I Can Has Cheezburger

Well if your even in town or want to visit our Ubuntu events on Tuesday evenings at the South End Tech Center on Columbus Ave, just let me know. Always around doing stuff.

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-- DoctorMO --