In a private conversation with another "old-timer" on this list (Thomas
Fletcher), I mentioned how thrilled I am that we've got such a healthy crop
of developers working on AbiWord these days.
By the summer of 1999, it became clear that SourceGear's funding levels for
AbiWord development would need to drop significantly, and both Jeff and I
left the company. There was a big question at the time whether quality
development could continue without paid experts like us making things
happen.
The answer, as you've all proven, is clearly yes. What many of you may not
realize is that this was no accident.
The reason I bring this up now is to help the current AbiWord development
community realize that there are specific things you can do -- individually
and collectively -- to continue the expansion of this fine development team.
1. Keep doing what you're doing.
---------------------------------
The combination of a quality codebase, steady progress making more features
Just Work, and regular releases of cleanly-packaged binaries is irresistable
to both users *and* developers. Everybody wants to be a part of the Next
Big Thing.
2. Toot your horns even more.
------------------------------
It used to take me about two or three solid days announcing binary releases
everywhere I could think of. Freshmeat is only one of dozens of news sites
and download points that want to hear about what we're doing. Bragging
about solid work is worth spending the time to do well.
3. Make reviewers happy.
-------------------------
Bob used to do a great job making sure that:
- anyone interested in reviewing AbiWord had someone to talk to,
- the published review got featured on our website, and
- we all knew about any complaints the reviewer had.
You can bet that any reasonable complaints which didn't get addressed before
the review was published jumped to the top of our list soon after. ;-)
4. Most importantly, revive the POWs and AWN so they both appear weekly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This last point is probably the least obvious, but I'm convinced they're the
reason that most of *you* are working on AbiWord right now.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the the "first post" dates for the set of
folks who've been doing the heavy development work over the last two months.
Besides Thomas, there's only one other "old-timer" who started when all
users had to build from sources:
12/98 Aaron Lehmann
During the first wave of binaries (5/99 - 8/99):
07/99 Hubert Figuiere
07/99 Pierre Abbat
08/99 Thomas Briggs
During the weekly POW period (9/99 - 3/00):
10/99 Bruce Pearson
01/00 Chris Digo
10/99 Dom Lachowitz
10/99 Frodo Looijaard
01/00 hj
10/99 Joaquin Cuenca Abela
02/00 Kevin Atkinson
11/99 Kevin Vajk
12/99 Martin Sevior
01/00 Sam TH
After the POWs stopped being weekly (4/00 - 9/00):
05/00 Ashleigh Gordon
08/00 Christopher Plymire
05/00 Jesper Skov
05/00 Mike Nordell
04/00 Tomas Frydrych
06/00 WJCarpenter
After AWN stopped being weekly (9/00 - present):
09/00 Vlad Harchev
10/00 ha shao
To repeat, I really don't think this is a coincidence. If you're interested
in recruiting additional development help to speed up work on AbiWord -- and
who wouldn't be? -- then reviving weekly POWs and AWN are indispensible.
Why revive AWN?
--------------
More people read it, and it gets easily picked up by other news outlets for
even broader dissemination. Sure, most of those people are users, but a
fraction also hack. That's where your new developers are.
As a side benefit, the public glory of getting your name mentioned here may
attract new hackers as well. Not everyone reads the CREDITS file as
religiously as I do.
Why revive POWs?
---------------
They lower the bar for getting new developers to write code we need.
As suggested in the original post, POWs are an obvious technique, because
they spell out a new project in sufficient detail that someone new to the
code base can come in and start scratching that itch without having to learn
their way around.
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/September/0097.html
Better yet, once they've scratched their first itch, most good developers
will hang around and continue finding other parts of the codebase to scratch
around in.
That's what happened to you, isn't it? :-)
Should I stop coding to do this?
-------------------------------
Not unless you want to. If you have time and energy to keep making more
features
Just Work, don't stop! However, these are perfect tasks for folks who
understand what it takes to develop the code we need, but are short on time
to do so themselves.
As you can probably tell, I wish I had more time to do this myself.
Paul,
social engineer
PS: If you personally know any VCs who want to own a slice of MSFT's
FY 2005 revenues and are looking to diversify away from vapid dotcoms,
email me privately.
