On 5/10/21 8:14 AM, Richard Purdie wrote: > TLDR: The project is seen as mature, employers don't prioritise maintaining > things and we're struggling for maintainers and help with day to day work > > > Open source projects survive, not just through development work and > contributions of new features but through a whole load of "unglamorous" > day to day "admin" work. This may be tracking down a regression, > triaging failing builds, making a release of a component, reviewing a > patch, documenting something or many other activities. > > I love the fact we have active contributions, particularly for new features > but we are continuing to struggle in many of the other areas above. I am > extrememly grateful for the help we do receive with these tasks! > > As a project we have automated an absolute ton of things, we can test > changes in ways we could only dream of a few years ago but maintaining > this automation, tracking down regressions and ensuring it all stays working > does have a cost. > > I am worried, not just about the core of the project, but the wider layer > ecosystem since "layer maintainer" isn't seen as a particularly interesting > career enabling focus by employers and it seems a lot of this work isn't > being > recognised. Internal business pressures are often continually being > prioritised over this. > > The YP+OE ecosystem is becoming more mature and this means we have our > experienced developers being pulled away to new things and few people > are replacing them so it feels like we're seeing a gradual skills drain/fade. > > There are a few things companies can do to help: > > a) Publicly acknowledge you use the project. > > I'm often asked where the project is being used but I find it hard to point > at companies using it, or products developed with it. It does help to be able > to point at real users rather than theoretical scenarios. We *know* it is used > in some interesting places but many won't let us say that publicly. > > https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Project_Users > > b) Embrace employee's Open Source contributions, code and otherwise > > If companies can find ways to recognise the value of having open source > experts/leaders working for them from a career development and reward > perspective, that would encourage people to do the important work needed > > c) Consider Yocto Project membership > > https://www.yoctoproject.org/ecosystem/members/ > https://www.yoctoproject.org/join/ > > We're finding that some infrastructure and roles need to be centrally funded > as the work is important but no one company is willing to commit people to it. > We're only able to to this through project membership which supports things > like the autobuilder, LTS, our build triage process and my own role. > > d) Support employees in spending some time on open source projects > > I hear quite often that employees get XX% time to spend on open source > projects. I also hear they get pulled onto mission critical product > deliverables and can't prioritise that other project work. Finding ways > to ensure employees can spend time on open source projects including > management support would help a lot. > > e) Transition roles > > If someone has a key role in a project but is moving to new things, help > them find a replacement and allow them time to train/transition to that > new person. Some companies do this really well, I'd call out NI and opkg > maintainership as a particularly good exmaple. > > > > I appreciate these are difficult times, both for individuals and for > businesses. I'd like to conclude by thanking everyone who does participate > and contribute. Whilst I do want/need to highlight the above (and have been > asked to do so that people have something they can point people at), the > project is proving to be successful, going to interesting places and making > things possible we can all be proud of! Thanks for summarizing all this.
So is the ask to forward this within the one's Employer? -armin > > Cheers, > > Richard > > > > > > > >
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1222): https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-architecture/message/1222 Mute This Topic: https://lists.openembedded.org/mt/82722442/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-architecture/unsub [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
