We are entering in 2016, my journey to open source started in 2004-05 when i attended one of the Linux User Group meetup in New Delhi, India. Those days we had to pay one$ for surfing internet for an hour, having a dial-up internet at home was considered luxury.
What was the scene those days?
- Linux user groups were more happening, we had demo days and most open source software developers were under single roof.
- We were more glued offline for beer/kebab/pizza and hangouts.
- To on-board new users to open source we were regularly conducting workshop across colleges and cities.
- We had mailing list, IRC, wiki [they still exists]
How are things now?
- Internet is everywhere & is part of our life.
- Mobile usage has exploded, information about everything is one tap away.
- Installing Linux & open source software has become much easier, internet & advanced GUI development gets credit.
- The whole open source ecosystem got divided into different camps & all started organizing/mentoring its own users/contributors.
- Web and social media platforms quora, stackoverflow along with free MOOC courses are loaded with all information.
- Online conferences like ubuntu developer summit summit and live streaming of conferences gave more wider audience.
- Github, Slack, Gitter are new cool among developers.
2016 & beyond new user on-boarding.
- We don’t have to spoon feed anymore, most of the information are available on the web. This generation is way smarter then us.
- We don’t have to go for extreme evangelism because web has enough information those who are interested will find a way.
- All we have to do is to mentor & help only if they need it.
PS: This is not a rant against all those who are still working on building a open source community in 2000 style, this is my thought & i might me wrong here.