On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 22:23 +0530, gaurav chaturvedi wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Ubuntu_11.04_.28Natty_N...
I am an Ubuntu user, but I don't understand such release parties. Ubuntu users come together and drink then what? Yes, I can understand if Ubuntu developer party after seeing their work going to users. I would prefer install fest by brining 'new' users to GNU/Linux at such occasions. By the way what is the contribution of India to the development of Ubuntu?
Coding / development does not happen in a vacuum. If a community is to form and people are to work with each other, especially for long times without ever seeing each other, face to face meetings are very important and I don't see anything wrong with hanging out - it's not like we'll be partying on Canonical's money or anything, so why the need to justify the party with contributions?
In any tech community around the world (hell, practically any community around the world), it is well understood that hanging out, just chatting, forming connections, drinking, eating together, forms an integral part of working together. I don't understand this moralistic attitude toward the idea of a 'party' and I would argue that a bigger hindrance to contributions is this attitude and not the partying - especially in the free software world, its extremely important that contributing / being part of a community be fun.
If you feel guilty about not contributing enough, go, convert 'new' users to ubuntu / free software, triage bugs, no one is stopping you -- but these are things I would do in everyday life, not mark out 2 hours on a sunday to do - considering we meet something like once every 2-3 months and all work hard at our jobs / whatever we do, is it really that bad if we use a natty narwhal release as an excuse to get together and have some fun, and learn some new things / meet some new people in the process ?
sorry for the rant - don't mean to flame, I just don't agree with this moralistic attitude whenever there is a suggestion for something that may involve some fun .. and then we wonder why more young people aren't interested in free software, ah well ..
my two cents for the day, Sanjay