Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Ismael Luceno <ismael.luceno AT gmail.com>]

I would like to reboot the discussion around this topic.

First, while visibility would help a little bit, at least to get us
considered, but when it comes to being actually popular, no single
technical mean would fix that.

So, we have two separate problems there: to improve the potential to be
popular, and to be visible so that people can find about us.

When it comes to visibility, IMO, where we have our repositories is
completely irrelevant, and contributing to Source Mage is already far
easier than contributing to other distributions (e.g. updating a spell
is dead easy). We could improve the help quill provides, we could make
it even easier to use, but that's about it.

What I think would make a difference is presenting our features in
workshops and talks at events (we do have a few interesting features!),
and having stands where people can approach us. Not easy to do given
most us are pretty busy, but it definitely works. At some point, we
should have some official program for that, or something...

Now, what I find important is that we definitely fail in a few areas
that are critical. The two main problems that make users think of SM
as something of low quality are: upgrades failing in mysterious ways,
something quite common, and the fact that documentation is somewhat
scarce.

Also, although less important, most are unhappy about having to
configure every minute detail the first time (this is something we
could easily solve, without compromising our goals), and the fact that
we don't have up-to-date ISOs (is that still a problem?).

Filling those gaps would definitely help.