From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/36988 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Michael Totschnig Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: anatomy of Gnus as a project and as a community Date: 20 Jul 2001 17:32:42 -0400 Organization: Gnus Information Center Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035172483 11501 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 03:54:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 03:54:43 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Return-Path: Original-Received: (qmail 1319 invoked from network); 20 Jul 2001 21:32:27 -0000 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org (195.204.10.139) by gnus.org with SMTP; 20 Jul 2001 21:32:27 -0000 Original-Received: (from news@localhost) by quimby.gnus.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA01787 for ding@gnus.org; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 23:32:19 +0200 (CEST) Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Path: not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus,gnus.ding Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: a230-206.distant.umontreal.ca Original-X-Trace: quimby.gnus.org 995664738 28292 132.204.230.206 (20 Jul 2001 21:32:18 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@quimby.gnus.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Jul 2001 21:32:18 GMT X-Face: *3CvpZiRslgUC;fTWZh!QaW1T],ge[<(qx()G[kwOtksjhQWI\%I3\1RVrjl !"Hvh^k[;i:s"lAw^OB6R~s`.4>DvB,k\'J~G$"]%LZyLgQcay)K-6"$Sc;V4 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090004 (Oort Gnus v0.04) XEmacs/21.1 (Channel Islands) Original-Lines: 200 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:36988 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:36988 Hello, in the course of my Ph.D. in communication studies, I have been recently involved in a research project about the free software movement. Since Gnus is probably the software I spend most time with, I decided to take Gnus as the object of my contribution to this project. What I would like to do, is write a sort of anatomy of Gnus as a project. Particularly I aim at - understanding how development and use interact; - describing how using Gnus differs from using other MUAs and news-readers; - describing the nature of the community of Gnus' users and developers; - describing the infrastructure sustaining this community, the material and informational configurations that are needed for Gnus being developed, maintained, distributed, installed, administered, configured and used, - understanding how the knowledge inscribed in, and associated with Gnus is distributed. In my methodology I intend to combine an analysis of the exchanges on the gnus newsgroups, an interview with Lars (who kindly agreed to answer by email and face-to-face recently when he came to Montreal), a description of the workings of Gnus, and a survey of Gnus' users and developers. This last item is the object of this posting. I want to ask you to answer the survey attached below, and to return it to me by email. The results of my research will be published primarily in French, but I will at least write a synthesis in English and present it to the Gnus community. I will cite information you disclose in this survey only anonymously, except if you explicitly give me authorisation do do otherwise. Any code fragments you might provide however will be attributed to you, except if you explicitly wish otherwise. If you have any comments and suggestions about the survey, I'd be very interested in hearing about them, too. I am interested in the answers from novice users as well as from long term developers. If you know any Gnus users who do not read the gnus newsgroups, feel free to forward this message to them. Many thanks in advance for your effort! Any answer I receive before 5 of August 2001 will be taken into account. Regards, Michael Survey: Gnus, anatomy of a free software project ================================================ Michael Totschnig 20 july 2001 0) statistics (optional) 0.1) your age 0.2) your sex 0.3) your profession 0.4) your country 1) usage 1.1) Which version of Gnus do you use, which version of Emacs, on what operating system 1.2) Do you use Gnus on your own computer, or on a system controlled and administered by an institution? 1.3) For how long have you been using Gnus? 1.4) In what context did you hear about Gnus the first time? 1.5) How would you describe the original incentive for starting to use Gnus? 1.6) Is Gnus your only mail user agent (MUA) / news-reader? If no, which others do you use? 1.7) How often did you upgrade to a new version of Gnus until today? 1.8) how much time do you spend using Gnus (absolute and relative to whole time spent working on computers)? 1.9) What are the features of Gnus you appreciate most? 1.10) What are the aspects of Gnus you dislike? 1.11) Has using Gnus an influence on the form or content of messages you send? 1.12) Has using Gnus an influence on your relationship with the persons or groups with whom you communicate by email or news? 1.13) What are the most important impacts of using Gnus on your work practices (leisure practices)? 1.14) Did using Gnus change the way you perceive electronic mail and Usenet (or any other systems you are using Gnus for)? 1.15) How is your use of Gnus integrated with other applications in your computing environment? 1.16) customisation: 1.16.1) How much time do you spend on configuring Gnus? 1.16.2) What is the size of your .gnus.el file? Is your .gnus.el file publicly accessible? Would you be willing to attach it to your answer (after editing it to delete personal information)? 1.16.3) What in your way of using Gnus differs most from the default setting? 1.16.4) To what degree does your way of using Gnus realize the way an ideal MUA/news-reader should work for you? 1.16.5) To what degree do you see Gnus primarily as a tool helping you to do your work and to communicate, or as a toy to experiment with? 2) development 2.1) would you say that you have been "programming" Gnus? If yes, has the result been kept for your own use, posted publicly, or integrated in the official release? 2.2) Do you actively play a role in the Gnus community, for example as active contributor (with CVS write access), by occasionally submitting bug reports, contributing to discussions about features and problems, submitting patches, helping users, or maintaining other resources? 2.3) If you contribute to Gnus on a regular basis, how much time do you invest per week in these tasks? 2.4) Can you describe you motivations for engaging in these tasks? 2.5) Name some of your contributions to the Gnus community, that you consider are most relevant for other users? 2.6) With how much of Gnus' source code are you approximately familiar? 2.7) Is your engagement for Gnus acknowledged and/or recompensed by your family, your school, your employer, or any other institution? 3) knowledge 3.1) How would you describe the knowledge you had to acquire in order to use Gnus, can you describe how this knowledge evolved, from what sources it was built? 3.2) How often in the course of using Gnus are you confronted with situations where you have to look for information before succeeding to do what you want? Can you describe one such situation? 3.3) Did you apply the knowledge you gained from studying the workings of Gnus and from using it in other contexts? Can you describe one such context and the kind of knowledge you applied? 4) community 4.1) Do you conceive of the users and developers of Gnus as one community, two different communities, no community at all? 4.2) How would you qualify this community (these communities)? 4.3) How would you describe the relation between users and developers? 4.4) What would be the values shared by this community (these communities)? 4.5) What is the place of the Gnus community with respect to wider online communities (Emacs, free software, Usenet, Internet)? 4.6) Can you think of any links between these communities and offline institutions or communities? 5) infrastructure 5.1) Which of the following resources do you use? Specify how often, and give any commentary you consider important about how they affect the way you use Gnus: gnus.emacs.gnus gnus.ding www.gnus.org my.gnus.org CVS others Please indicate if you'd let me ask you some additional questions by email. Please indicate if you do not mind information you disclosed being attributed to you in publications resulting from this research. Thank you very much for your time! -- Michael Totschnig PGP/GPG-Public-Key: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/d364101/pgp.shtml