On 5/13/07, Gregers Petersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
WIP-Day or, OpenWrt 'Work-In-Progress-Day' There are ongoing discussions about both transparency in the OpenWrt community, and how to involve/attract people in/to the development work in the project. I have been wondering about this for some time, and a discussion with a developer from the Gentoo project made me think. The Gentoo project organizes an activity called 'Bug-Day' - which is a monthly "day" (24 hours during a weekend) focussed on fixing "bugs" in both distro and packages. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/bugday/index.xml In practice it takes place on IRC, and the aim is to make it possible for everyone to participate in fixing a "bug" (independent of skills and experience). There is an official list of "bugs" which is posted before the day starts, and various developers/committers help people who take part with learning how to do this (this was the very short version).
I think that this is a good idea but the communication should take place on the mailing list so that people in different timezones will not miss anything. Also should be advertised on the mailing list, irc, and in a stickied forum thread so that the most amount of people will see it. I would like to suggest that something similar was introduced as part of
the activities of OpenWrt? Though, I have to admit that I believe the concept itself would have to be changed somewhat. It can be difficult to identify what a "bug" is, when it comes to OpenWrt - is it in the software or the hardware, or a combination of both. Gentoo is mainly a distribution aimed at the more 'classic' pc/server architecture - whereas OpenWrt is an embedded system. It is my experience that you have to become quite confident with direct tinkering with hardware, to become a skilled user/developer - when it comes to OpenWrt (tell me if I'm wrong?) The category of hardware with WIP status (Work-In-Progress) is quite wellknown, but also mysterious.
It is my suggestion to use the focus on the WIP status, as a way of
organizing a parallel to the Gentoo Bug-Day. This would bring focus to the following: 1. OpenWrt is no longer "just" aimed at Linksys routers (or just routers in general). 2. A long list of platforms are of interest: https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/platforms - and various developers are interested in these/work on them. 3. It is not difficult to take part in practical terms - and the OpenWrt project is open and public. By organizing a day (monthly, or more often) it would become possible to promote these platforms and present the individual developers/committers of them - hereby both create a way of making information accessible and help people participate in the development process. It would be needed that the various developers "handling" the platforms would be willing to spend a day (24 hours) guiding and helping - but this would hopefully not be a problem? It would anyway be on some sort of rotation.
I would say monthly, I don't think the resources are there to do it more often. Practical example: A WIP-Day could look as the following:
The focus is on the Fritz-Box - people who are interested in upgrading their Fritz-Box or porting OpenWrt compile a list of problem/bugs before 'WIP-Day' - then they gather on a defined IRC #Channel and start working on the list (with helping each other and new-commers).
I don't think the day should be focused on a particular box as much as having developers online to cover a platform (AR7-2.6), it may be better to have enough developers online to cover most platforms and work on packages. The first WIP-Day could focus on Pre1 bugs, particularly packages that do not compile and the couple of remaining tickets in trac. This would hopefully result in a 'power-boost' to the work with the
Fritz-Box, as well as support the community is a positive way. Some continuations of this idea --> 1. Hopefully members would begin helping out with the practical organizing or such a WIP-Day - as well as perhaps work on general documentation could be spawned (and a re-working of the existing). 2. It would be possible to extend WIP-Day into 'real world' - using various settings to organize practical OpenWrt workshops. People could attend and get introduced both to members/developers and learn new skills. One such workshop could focus on learning to interact with embedded hardware - from tftp, over serial, to jtag, basic soldering and so forth. If you'r not experienced with these things, it's difficult to learn it by yourself. Again, such 'real world' activities would also help make OpenWrt more accessible.
These would be great for people to learn but need to be arranged by the community. Maybe there could be a easy way to advertise such meetings so that people that are interested would be able to attend. Apart from all this - I would be willing to spend some time with
"putting this suggestion into water" (organizing it). But, I would not be able to do it without support and help (in all kind of ways) from the developers/members of OpenWrt? Though - it would be best to discuss and unfold this suggestion before anything else.
-Travis Sincerely
Gregers (aka. glp on IRC) -- Gregers Petersen, Anthropologist [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.wireless-ownership.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
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