Latest months have been of great improvement and empowerment on my life; say by my return to the academic life, more of the crazy corporate and business world and other changes on my own (read self hacks) have been keeping me busy and on constant training. Sadly, and not by intent, this have impacted on my direct contribution to the free software ecosystem and interact and work together with the brave gnu world out there. However I’ve been doing some little work and also finding ways to keep cooperating but now from another position. Today I’d like to present the first of this new form of contribution to the free software ecosystem, and specially to the Debian Project.
In the last couple of months I’ve been working on a paper which intends to offer a (not so) new -as you might notice after reading it- approach to what the Debian Project have been managing to produce and what can be done to keep doing it better in the new escenery that we are and will be living in the upcoming years.
My work describes the way Debian have been sucessfully producing lead-users, as described by Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing innovation book, since it’s conception and what elements were key to have done so. Previously it takes a look on how the process of innovation is really done. Then it describes the current and future world’s escenery according research and current trends, later it makes links between them and gives some ideas for us to keep fostering innovation and play a key role in the free software ecosystem.
With this work my intention is for us to understand what we are, what are we good doing, and how we can keep rocking! I want Debian to look further and be the free software development cutting edge project and atract bright people to work on what they are passionate about.
Hopefully I’ll be in Mar del Plata to discuss about this and also have some fun with you guys I haven’t seen in years!
I’d appreciate any comment or feedback to this. My intention is to turn this work into a collaborative fashion that allow us to make our project much more wonderful!
The full paper is here to download (pdf):