Rob, I agree, making this project open and accessible for all who want to contribute is an important consideration.
With regards to the short term priorities and delivering AOO 3.4 to maintain traction, I completely agree. With regards to a post AOO 3.4 approach, I would advocate a balanced approach that seeks a harmonious blend between the product direction and sustainability, technical feasibility and end user desirability. I feel the best way to realize such balance in the final product, is to mirror a similar balance in our approach and process. Perhaps we could seek to organize in specific sub-communities that seek to not only complete tasks, but communities, where the our volunteers learn about a discipline (product management, user experience design, development, testing, documentation, etc.) learn how to manage the effort, learn how integrate their contribution, learn how to drive change and have an impact. As I am new to this effort, my initial thoughts may be obvious to the more seasoned contributor. For my part, I can say that I am very interested in contributing to our user experience and product design approach. I will observe my new UX contributor experience and capture any thoughts that might help contribute to attracting and retaining other design-oriented volunteers moving forward. I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation. Best regards, Kevin On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > There have been some side discussions on this topic. I'd like to > collect these ideas into one thread. > > My observations: > > 1) The OpenOffice code base has a reputation of being complex, hard to > understand, even "haunted". It is difficult for new developers to get > involved with it. > > 2) We get regular offers of help from new volunteers for other project > functions, such documentation, QA, website,etc., but we are not doing > a great job getting them to be successful contributors in the project. > > 3) Nothing is free. Making the code easier to understand, or > mentoring new contributors to the project, these things time and > effort. > > So there is a natural trade-off between short term progress on > features and long term growing of the contributor base. With AOO 3.4 > we have biases the effort toward forward progress on the release. Post > AOO 3.4 we might want to adjust to a more balanced approach. > > Any ideas and the best ways how we can improve in this area after AOO > 3.4 releases? > > -Rob >
