I believe that if you want to increase the amount of people that can contribute then you need to do 2 things: * Advertise(increase awareness) that people can contribute * Increase the community's knowledge RATHER than reducing the amount of knowledge needed.
Ok the first one: * Advertise(increase awareness) that people can contribute the first thing you need to do is create a new html page and links to it e.g. http://www.ntop.org/contribute.html You should also mention that people can contribute on the: documentation.html support.html needHelp.html download.html pages. Here a short paragraph on those pages with a link back to http://www.ntop.org/contribute.html If you are after some ideas check out: http://contributing.openoffice.org/ Think about how BOTH users and developers can contribute to this project. There are many parts that come together to make ntop what it is... plugins, patterns, fingerprints, etc. Users can contribute patterns and fingerprints. Users can contribute documentation. etc etc. An advanced user with enough documentation might even be able to contribute a plugin which brings me to the second point. You should also maintain an up-to-date TODO list on the website so developers can have a look to see if they could quickly contribute a small piece of code. Ok the second one: * Increase the community's knowledge RATHER than reducing the amount of knowledge needed. One of the main problems is that most/all of the documentation/knowledge is in your head rather than out there in the community. I'd suggest setting up a forum perhaps running phpBB where both users and developers can ask questions, post guides, etc etc. I'd also suggest requiring an animated CAPTCHA(I recommend JkCaptcha http://www.kessels.com/captcha/) during the registration process to prevent spambots from filling up the forum. Once you have setup the forum, find someone you can delegate the administration of it to and perhaps promote some helpful users into moderators. Both the mailings lists and forum are good sources of information but users shouldn't have to go searching the mailing lists or searching the forums to find useful information. Any useful information(past, present, and future) posted to the mailing lists and forums should then be turned into a wiki article. Speaking of which there should be a link to the wiki from the homepage as well as on the documentation.html page. Also please move the wiki system from https://svn.ntop.org/ to something like: http://www.ntop.org/wiki as svn.ntop.org is very slow to display HTML pages. Keep the svn.ntop.org for your current ticketing system. Also the documentation for ntop is both poor and outdated. You need to build a up-to-date knowledge base. Documentation is a vital part of any project. You need HOWTOs, manuals, man pages, guides, tutorials, wiki articles, etc etc. The man page for ntop needs to be wikified. When the average user is reading the man page for ntop, how are they supposed to know about what a WWN is or what FCID/VSAN stands for and means or what is meant by LUN information let alone what would invalid LUN information be. What are the security risks when a user runs ntop as root? These things don't need to be explained in the man page but they should be expanded and explained in the wiki if users are looking for more information. As for the wiki, there needs to be wiki articles about how to use the wiki, i.e. how would a user create a new wiki page, edit an existing page, applying formatting, use tables/lists, create links between wiki pages, etc etc. There also needs to be a wiki TODO list so people can see what wiki pages still need to be created/edited/updated so they can help out in this area. The download page should include information about what additional software ntop can utilise if it is installed(ettercap/openssl etc) and should also list what other software is required(libpcap etc) for a successful compilation/installation. There needs to be a getting started guide. All the steps from setting up the pre-requirements both optional and compulsory, downloading the ntop source(either from tarball or from svn), compiling(and what are some of the switches users might be interested in setting via autogen), different make targets, or downloading a binary, and then running ntop and what options are strongly recommended to set e.g. --spool-file-path, downloading the google maps key and registering it before running ntop, etc etc. You need to create HOWTOs, manuals, man pages, guides, tutorials, wiki articles for at least the following: * Creating a fingerprint(include all steps via an example). What software is required to create a fingerprint(try to use free as in cost software where possible) on Linux/MacOSX/Windows? How does a user use that software to create a fingerprint? How does that user then share that fingerprint with the ntop community(create a upload page that users can submit their fingerprints??). If these instructions were available I would submit a fingerprint for the PS3 that is in my home network(if that was possible). Could nmap be used instead or in addition to ettercap for host/OS identification?? * Creating a pattern(including all steps via an example). What software is required to create a pattern(try to use free as in cost software where possible) on Linux/MacOSX/Windows? How does a user use that software to create a pattern? How does that user then share that fingerprint with the ntop community(create a upload page that users can submit their patterns??). If these instructions were available I would submit a pattern for my favourite online game Team Fortress Classic. * Creating a plugin(demonstrate via an example) under Linux/MacOSX/Windows. * How to setup a development environment(free as in cost software) for ntop under Linux/MacOSX/Windows. * How to download ntop via svn, make a change, compile it, and then submit those changes back via svn under Linux/MacOSX/Windows. Build a knowledge base for developers by including RFCs, whitepapers, specifications, etc for different media and different protocols and anything else that is relevant for ntop. If you do these 2 things I believe that participation and contribution by the community should increase. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Luca Deri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <ntop@unipi.it>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:31 AM Subject: [Ntop-dev] Opening up ntop > Dear all > I want to share with you some ideas that I have in mind since a few > months. After 10 years of ntop (as project I mean, not just an > application) I believe there's a need to tackle some rough edges. In > particular, the main problem I see is that ntop is perceived as an > application I mostly develop and (beside very few users) you use with > limited (if any) contribution in terms of code development. In a > nutshell I can expect bug reports but no code. IMHO this is due to two > reasons. First, is my personal failure to build a real ntop developer > community (I'll came to this argument later in this email) and second > because ntop is not simple to hack for everyone. > > Even if I'm not an open-source expert, I believe that in order to > increase the number of people that can contribute to the project as > developers, is to reduce the amount of knowledge needed. For this > reason, as you might have noticed in the past weeks, I have started to > implement a Perl (more languages will follow if there's a request from > the community) interface that allows users to become developers. I > envisage (this in a few months as soon as the API is stable) the > creation of a ntop contribution site where users contribute with perl > scripts. My vision is to turn ntop into an engine, with a default web > GUI (the one you know) but with the ability to have a richer user > experience by means of an perl scripts. If this move will succeed, I > hope that many people will contribute and that development will be > parallelized. Done that, some other parts need to be open but this is > perhaps too early to discuss. > > ntop as a community. This is certainly a weak point of the project. I > believe that the core ntop team (that's basically me) need to be > enlarged by establishing responsibilities/duties, commit to them, and > avoiding that the whole project would depend on me. I have no clue how > to achieve this. I've asked some people around, and I would like to > come up with a response at the end of the summer. I need your > contribution here both in terms of ideas and contribution to the > project. > > Please send me your thoughts. The ultimate goal is to allow ntop to > grow both in terms of application and community. > > Cheers Luca > _______________________________________________ > Ntop-dev mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop-dev _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list Ntop@unipi.it http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop
