On 5/11/13, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm thinking we have three kinds of volunteers: > > 1) Those who come here with a specific thing in mind that they want to > accomplish. > > and > > 2) Those who are looking to help in any way they can > > and > > 3) Those who are hoping to gain an experience or learn a skill > > Maybe 3) is a subset of 2). > > In some areas of the project, we'll get mainly type 2) or 3) > volunteers. For example, with QA. In most cases someone volunteers > without a specific thing in mind. They generally want to help out > where they can. There are exceptions, of course. For example we have > some volunteers who specifically want to test accessibility, but not > other areas. That is more like #1. > > With developers we see all three types. For example, a developer from > another project might want to integrate their code from another > project into AOO. Or they are working on a port to BSD. Or they want > to add a specific feature. But we also have those who just want to > help in general. > > The approach we've taken so far has been more of an > apprentice/journeyman/master progression, where we have new developers > start with learning to build, then progress to easy bugs, then simple > bugs, medium, etc. Eventually they know enough to do more significant > work. This helps make, over time, a very well-rounded contributor. > However, it is probably frustrating for type #1 volunteers who are > looking to do something specifically. It is also frustrating for > someone who wants #3, but doesn't have much time. > > So I wonder what we can do to make it easier for any volunteer to > contribute? Some questions to think about: > > 1) Twice a year (once a semester) we get an influx of college students > who have been told by their professor to contribute to an open source > project. That is a type #3 developer. What can we line up for them > to work on in the Fall, that they can get started with quickly? If > someone has only 10 hours to offer, and we'll never here from them > again, what can they do?
I think we could focus on the documentation of the easy hacks, some of them are pretty outdated, some people have write to the list that the code has change so much that the patch no longer work. There is also a lot of information missing from a noob that want to work in the code. He faces many folders and structures that might be too overwhelming. So trying to understand how to navigate through the code might be helpful. There are some talks on different OOoCon that had talk about this issue and also ways to improve the situation. QA might be the easiest simple way to contribute, like confirming bugs and or reporting language bugs, or similar things. Donating templates, and writing up tutorials might be also a na easy way to contribute specially if you are taking finance, math or chemistry and want t explain how to use the more obscure calc formulas. Or simply develop an Add-In for a specific formula, like Taxes, or something more regional. > > 2) Would it make sense to assemble "cookbooks" for some common > extension points, updating existing documentation where needed and > check in sample code to illustrate things like: adding a core > spreadsheet function, adding a chart type, adding an import/export > filter, etc. If there were maybe 8 core recipes for the most > promising areas for new developers, then they could get started > faster. > > Of course it would also be a respectable position to say that we don't > want to encourage very many new features, and instead focus on > improving quality and performance, but be judicious in adding features > to avoid bloat. Encourage extensions, of course. But maybe we want > to start a serious effort at a native mobile app? That would > certainly attract new developers. > > Regards, > > -Rob > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > -- Alexandro Colorado Apache OpenOffice Contributor http://es.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
