Re: [Mypaint-discuss] My Paint, request for an Open Source interview
Keeping the MyPaint list CC'ed. On 9 December 2011 05:27, Morgan Daley dal...@allegheny.edu wrote: Hello, First I would like to thank you for for your reply. I have tried contacting multiple people in multiple different open source organizations, and your the first one to reply, so thank you. Secondly thank you for CC'ing the email to the MYPaint mailing list. Some fallow up questions: When someone new joins the already existing MYPaint community how do you and the MYPaint community integrate them in? Joining the community of contributors theoretically happens by someone just starting to work in an area*. This can be testing, software development, documentation, packaging, marketing, and similar. Because most of the communication channels and work-media (wiki, issue-tracker, forums etc.) are open for anyone to use, they can often 'integrate themselves'**. However, some resources, like the official source code repositories and the official website, can only be changed by a trusted set of people. Integrating someone who wants to work in these areas is a bit longer process. Typically they do work outside the official resources and then propose these changes to be taken in. Some of the existing contributors then review and accept the changes, possibly after asking for some modifications. Once the new contributor has gone through the proccess a couple of times and shown to be competent and reponsible, they are added to this trusted set of people. They are then 'fully integrated' in the project, and can integrate new people. * In practice, people often need some assistance; whether it is with the tools used, how a certain thing should be done, or simply affirmation that they are on the right way and doing good things. ** Alternatively, you could say that the act of having open communication channels and work-media is a way the project integrates people. Why do you specifically, and others in general, work on MYPaint? The general case is very hard to answer comprehensively, but here are some thoughts: I think some reasons can be either general (why someone works in _a_ project of this kind), or specific (why someone works in _the_ project). General reasons can include: - Wanting to be part of a community of people that work together towards a shared vision / common goal - A belief in the idea of free and open source software, and wanting to contribute towards its success. - Wanting to improve ones own skills and get 'real life' experience Reasons why someone would work on one project specifically can include: - Having a strong personal interest in the topics the project touches on (for MyPaint this could for instance be graphics processing, digital painting, or any of the technologies involved) - Being a user of the software, and wanting to improve it for that reason (one of the significant reasons for the two most active MyPaint developers I believe) - Being a contributor to related projects, and wanting to improve the project due to the synergies (one of the reasons why I as a MyPaint contributor also did work on OpenRaster, GEGL and GIMP projects) - Knowing someone already involved in the project As for me personally, most of the reasons I work on MyPaint are part of the 'general' things mentioned above. The thing that caused me to start working on MyPaint specifically was more-or-less a coincidence: I was present in an IRC channel when a MyPaint contributor was giving a shout-out about the project and that they wanted help. I was interested in learning the technologies (Python, GTK+) involved, and had the time available to work on it, so I figured; why not? You mentioned direct interaction between the community and the end user. How does this direct interaction help the project with reaching its goal? As a volunteer project the motivation of the contributors is critical, and (as touched upon in the last email), the direct contact with (happy/satisfied) end users can be very motivating. So I think that is the first way it helps. Secondly it is neccesary for the project to get feedback from the end-users on which things are working well, and which things are not. This is in order to be able to steer the project in the right direction and making the right decisions. Traditional commercial projects will often use things like market studies, usability studies and similar to achieve this. For a volunteer, non-commercial project this can be hard to do due to the lack of fincancial resources, and having direct interaction between the project and its consumers (end-users) can be seen as an alternative. It is not without its challenges, for instance vocal minorities can tend overshadow the majority: A change might be acceptable or even good in the eyes of the majority, but small groups complaining loudly might form the majority of feedback you get. Or the other way around; a change can cause minor issues for a large group of people (but not major enough for any one of them to complain), but
Re: [Mypaint-discuss] My Paint, request for an Open Source interview
CC'ing the MyPaint mailing list. On 2 December 2011 19:56, Morgan Daley dal...@allegheny.edu wrote: My name is Morgan Daley, I am a college student at Allegheny College, in the United States. For one of my classes the professor has asked that we find leaders on a creative commons project, and ask them some questions about what they are doing. While looking around for a project that interested me I came across the My Paint project, and found out about your part in the project. If you don't mind I would like to ask you these questions: Hi Morgan, I'm more than glad to answer your questions. I like thinking and talking about these things. Do note that I am not the leader of the MyPaint project, and I have not actively focused on being a leader in the project. But as a person who has been around in the project and similar projects for some time, maybe I have some insights to share still. I have CC'ed the MyPaint mailing list so that others may respond as well. As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening? As a open project in the creative field (digital painting/drawing), we are blessed with a lot of creative inflow. Artists using the software we make often like to share their art on sites like DeviantArt and the fact that they used MyPaint to create it. See http://mypaint.deviantart.com/ for example. Some come to us directly, telling us how they use the software in their workflows and with ideas on how the software can be improved, or share techniques with other artists. This is very inspirational for the people involved in the project. I find that the challenge in many open source projects is not that there is not enough inspiration, it is that there is not enough manpower to act on this inspiration and take the idea somewhere. This can be very demotivating: After all, what good is a high inflow of ideas if you can't do anything with them? What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time? First and foremost have a strong and clear vision, and communicate this clearly and consistently. You want to attract people who share the same vision, or visions that are aligned, and also to attract as few people as possible who have incompatible visions. From this you can work to set goals for how to achieve that vision, preferably in such a way that it is easy to determine whether you are progressing towards them or not. If you want to be a leader, I think that it is first when you have these things 'down' that you should start worrying about doing the 'actual work'. Knowing how to achieve X is meaningless if you don't know what X should be. Don't waste your and others time chasing the wrong things. How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization? In the environment we have I think the most important is simply to not discourage creative thinking. This is harder than it may sound as a leader, as it often means refraining from trying to get things 'your way'. Especially in volunteer projects, people derive their motivation largely from being able to work towards goals that they think are worthy in _their way_*. If you take that from them, there is a high risk that you take away most of the motivation. And then everyone loses. * This of course is the same for yourself, which is the reason it is so hard to let go of it. Do you set aside specific times to cast vision to your employees and other leaders? Hehe, no, very few things happen at specific times in a small open source project like MyPaint: Everyone is a volunteer, so there are no employees. This means that people work when they find the time to do so, in between their work/studies, family and friends. Some only contribute once or twice, some only a couple of times throughout the year, and some spend many hours a week at times. The vision is perhaps cast mostly through the collective of day-to-day actions, discussions and decisions. For those who are closely involved with the project, this typically works well enough, as they are present in most of these interactions. However, for those that are less involved it often does not. They might only have observed a few interactions, and thus fail to see the bigger picture*. To address that, Martin wrote up the goals on our website: http://mypaint.intilinux.com/?page_id=56, and we point people to that regularly. * The vast majority of decision happen in public forums, through mailing lists and IRC chat. But of course many who have an interest in the project do not follow these actively. Can you explain the impact, if any, that social networking and Web 2.0 has made on your organization or you personally? Hmm. I don't see how it has made a big impact on MyPaint. But then again, we have not tried to leverage it much either. And as an open source project, we have already had the main trait that people associate with social networking and web 2.0 for
