Hello Blink-dev!
We took a survey <https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/hlYgtMOrNdE/m/cQwco0wLAwAJ> of your impressions of our process and tooling back in February, and I wanted to share the results. This survey was an iteration of a survey conducted in early 2021 <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zq1Y1FD1i57s4-gPsKwaRSyp5hQYkBIDphWbuNshXgA/edit?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-SASGA2yDR0Qz2DmfRp_vWA>; where interesting, we’ll compare responses. We only got 22 responses this year, down from 62 last year, so the results are more suggestive than statistically significant. Background of respondents - 81% of respondents work on Chromium full-time, down from 95% last year. - Of the 20 people who work on Chromium as part of their jobs, 4 people identified themselves as working for non-Google companies, about the same as the 30% last year. Unlike last year, nobody identified themself as from Microsoft, only Opera and Intel. - 81% develop features. - 59% participate in a standards body. - 40% are API owners or decide what features to enable in a Chromium-based browser, which overrepresents high-level decision-makers in the survey results. Key summary points The people who replied feel better about their understanding of the process than last year: Most of the more-detailed questions about understanding <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV4De89YgwbRTZTQ0PU2MNWdWyJ1Q90A6sGPwnriaFU/edit?pli=1#heading=h.viqr7ldwahtm> follow this pattern, with some remaining confusion about how to gather Web Developer Signals, using feedback from Origin Trials, and how the Chromium process interacts with processes within standards bodies. This is better than the understanding last year, although this result could be skewed by the higher proportion of API owners and decision-makers in the responses. Respondents reported <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV4De89YgwbRTZTQ0PU2MNWdWyJ1Q90A6sGPwnriaFU/edit?pli=1#heading=h.hoimvz5gr9e7> that it's hard to maintain features in Chrome Status, partly because the UI is confusing and not tailored to all of the types of features that people need to create and maintain. This contributes to the information in Chrome Status being out of date. Developers also complained that issues <https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chromium-dashboard/issues> they file don't get fixed promptly. Many of the respondents are discouraged about TAG review <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV4De89YgwbRTZTQ0PU2MNWdWyJ1Q90A6sGPwnriaFU/edit?pli=1#heading=h.ieczgerom2j> and review by other browser engines. TAG review is considered slow and unhelpful, and one developer said they sometimes feel like a punching bag for other vendors. Googlers appreciated fast build speeds and Goma but folks complained about flaky tests and CQ reliability. There were some complaints <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV4De89YgwbRTZTQ0PU2MNWdWyJ1Q90A6sGPwnriaFU/edit?pli=1#heading=h.wnpm4kiqbb9y> that the infrastructure teams have launched new versions of some tools without addressing the bugs in them. I've also collected more details and people's text responses in this document <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tV4De89YgwbRTZTQ0PU2MNWdWyJ1Q90A6sGPwnriaFU/edit?usp=sharing> . Jeffrey -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "blink-dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CANh-dXkk%2Bcm%3Dz940TAOAau%2BpJ0GpXRLFvmHP5HWWBjr4ghEJoQ%40mail.gmail.com.
