Ché Kristo wrote On 12/17/06 21:38,:
So far a lot of effort has gone into allowing members of the OpenSolaris Community contribute code to OpenSolaris, this has been great and a lot of progress has been made on this front.
Indeed it has. We blew away all our pre-launch expectations for code contributions. I view the request-sponsor program -- as manual as it currently is -- to be one of the most successful programs on OpenSolaris. Before we launched, we really didn't have a clue what to expect. Then about mid year someone at Sun made up a so-called goal of 100 integrations in the first year. This goal, like most corporate goals, was grabbed out of thin air. We made it, of course, but whatever. I'm more interested in the new relationships that have formed among Sun's OpenSolaris engineers and the code contributors who have been working in the request-sponsor program. We've learned a great deal.
I think it would be a great idea for non-programmers (Such as myself) to be able to contribute to specific projects within the OpenSolaris community which we deem to be valuable. Surrently sites like Sourceforge offer the ability for end users to contribute, why not OpenSolaris?
I don't think we ever considered taking cash donations from non-Sun community members, to be honest. I could be wrong, though. I suppose you'd have to pitch a Sun executive or the OGB if you have a strong community interest behind your proposal. I have no clue how it would work from a corporate perspective.
However, I'm more interested in your comment about non-programmers being able to contribute to the community. Are you strictly talking about money in that instance? How about non-financial ways non-programmers can contribute? We've talked about this many times before, but I never really had the sense that there was a strong consensus to do more than we are doing currently (aside from the obvious things such as docs, mail list activity, blogs, evangelism, presentations, etc).
I'm interested in seeing more community growth -- not just at the current growth rate but /much/ more rapidly and in many more areas. I'm also not sure how to do it.
Jim
For a more detailed proposal go to: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfmzsbtz_21hd3br2 Or see my blog @: http://chuckup.blogspot.com/
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