Hi Chris,
I wouldnt be to hard on yourself. Although we didnt hit 100 fixes we did (I
believe) fix more issues than in the previous couple of releases and due to
targeting core libraries such as GTK we fixed some very high impact bugs, one
was even proposed as a google summer of code project for Ubuntu.
As for why we failed to reach 100 bug fixes is VERY clear to me. We simply do
not have enough contributing developers, you can triage all the bugs you want
be it means nothing if there is no one to fix them. I was hopeful when there
was an increase in people asking how they could help but it didnt seem to
result in many fixes, my guess is due to lack of experience. If we are serious
about fixing more bugs we need to attract more developers to the project, the
question is how? I have thought about this many times, and the best thing I can
think of is getting some kind of sponsorship, in otherwords some rewards/prizes
for developers. A reward for the most bugs fixed for a release, a reward for
the the highest profile bug of the release etc, make it into a competition,
make it fun! If we are successfull enough maybe even get a sponsor for each and
every bug. Anyway its just one idea. But if you really want serious developers
working on this project you need
to reward them for their work (or at lease make it more fun), the more I
contribute to open source the more I realise that unlike what I was lead to
believe most open source developers are paid one way or another. As for how or
who we get to sponsor the project I have no idea. Maybe we could get Valve to
throw some steam vouchers our way, maybe we could crowd source monetary funds
via something like http://pledgie.com, be creative I'm sure there are many
other ways to make the project fun to contribute to. Anyway maybe I'm just a
dreamer but I think we need to think big to really get things moving.
Anyway as to why my contributions stopped (aside from becoming a new father) I
was just suffering burnout. I was feeling pretty good as I hit the double
figures of bug fixes but it started to feel as though I was just working hard
for free while everyone I was colaborating with with were getting paided for
there contributions it was very demotivating. I know I might sound selfish but
it takes a large amount of time to work on bug fixes and its very hard to fit
in when you have a family and full time job. I have been thinking about trying
out a crowdsource funding project of my own so that I could take time off work
and work full time for a period of time fixing bugs voted on by the backers but
I'm not very confident it would be successful.
Anyway I'm starting to talk crap now, this is just things as I see them.
Tim
________________________________
From: Chris Wilson <[email protected]>
To: Ubuntu Papercuts Ninjas <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, 9 May 2013 9:06 PM
Subject: [Papercuts-ninja] Paper Cuts in 13.10
Hey all,
13.04 has just wrapped up and it's time to start thinking about what we're
going to do in the next cycle. I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that
we never came close to fixing 100 bugs over the over six months, and I think we
should take some time to figure out why that happened, and what we could do
better in this cycle.
If anyone has anything they'd like to say about how we've been working, then
please come out and say it, no matter how critical it is. The only way we're
going to get better at this is by facing up to the truth, no matter how hard it
is.
A few points I'd like to make:
* I dropped off the radar for the past few months as real life has
gotten in the way. I fucked that one up and I'll look at managing my time
better. One thing I'm thinking of doing is setting aside one evening each week
for Ubuntu stuff, so no matter what else happens, I've always got the slot of
time to give to the project.
* We didn't target all 100 bugs at the very start, which made it harder
for people to know what there was to do.
* I went a little mad shortly after the start of the 13.04 cycle, and
changed up a bunch of the milestones around the second month. That won't be
happening again because we're going to talk together about what we want to do
for the coming cycle and stick with it. I hope that by the end of next week
(Sunday 19th) we can have our milestones and bug targets sorted out.
* It's been mentioned before that it's not clear from our wiki pages
how a new user should get involved with the project. I agree with that and we
should have a look at our 'getting started' documentation to figure out how we
can improve it.
Those are my thoughts on what happened last cycle and what we can improve next
cycle. what do other people have to say?
Chris
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