I got interested in Ubuntu development (I should say bugfixing) less than a week ago, and I joined the team a few days ago. So, I am a complete newbie. As such, I think a big problem it's the feeling of being overwhelmed. I had to learn at least the basics debian/ubuntu packaging, Baazar, Launchpad, Bug reporting, patches, upstream/downstrem, etc.
I followed the Ubuntu Packaging Guide, which does not a bad job of guiding you through the steps, but the material is large, and naturally a lot of different questions and doubt arises, and the material in which you could find the answers is, in my opinion, not well organized. I've found myself using google a lot, while I think it should be a natural flow from a main "documentation index" to various pieces of documentation that can lead you and "show you around", introducing the different bricks separately, but in a common context. Another thing I think it's important it's the community: where is the community in reading thousands of line of documentation, searching online for answers, or having a reply on a comment you made on a bug on launchpad (maybe with months of delay..). No, I think the community should be active, fuzzy and immediate, and I that prospect I really think we should 'push' IRC. But really push it, like the first two lines of every documentation page aimed at newbies should be: "Fell overwhelmed? Come talk to us on IRC, channel <#channel>!" with a link to a guide for those who don't know IRC. On IRC: - You are surrounded by people like you and more expert than you, which makes you think: "Oh, good, I'm not the only idiot newbie here!" and "Oh, good, there is someone who knows something here!" - Specific question can be answered without having to find it at line 540, between parenthesis, of a man page of a software you didn't know you weren't using, that you found out reading a 2007 mail exchange in a mailing-list archive (that kinda happened) - You can be directed to the right piece of documentation: not RTFS-style, but if someone is lost in the immense world of references, docs and manpages, a good samaritan can point him/her in the right direction - Everybody likes hanging out with cool and fun people. (I've no doubt we all are) And avoid hundreds of overly specific, unpopulated channels. A new user who's thinking about contribuiting wants to find himself in a welcoming sparkling community (Ubuntu? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)), not in a cemetery with 10 lines of chat a week. So, a general-purpose channel for everyone who helps, be it designer, translator, a curious passing by, artist, people who just file bugs etc.. #i-wanna-help-ubuntu All this i think is appealing to new, non expert users, maybe a bit less to more experienced ones, for which I think the reward idea is good. It's not about the 'tangible reward', it's about being reckoned and thanked for your voluntary work: nobody likes to spend hours fixing a bug which affects 3 people in the world and that nobody know you've fixed. On this matter, I think a "thanks" system as the one on XDA is a good think. TL;DR: A possible recipe - Well organized documentation - IRC as main vector of active *community* (#I-wanna-help-ubuntu) - Assure people are reckoned and thanked for their work. Sorry for the long post and for my english. On 9 May 2013 16:04, Alberto Salvia Novella <[email protected]> wrote: > What I can say about attracting more contributors is my own experience: > > - Many of the bugs I filled never get attention, although they are > very well documented and are about very obvious problems. > - Since the 22nd of March y expended tons of time trying to get into > the BugControl team to help triaging those unattended bug reports, but > after six responses I'm still not in, and every of them took me hours to > write. In fact the initial application took me about eight hours. > > So my conclusion is no one will like to contribute because they perceive > their effort as useless. Other things that can influence the people to > quit, including myself, are: > > - The operating system being very buggy; and not underdone, but crude > sometimes ๐ > - Canonical promoting > Amazon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies>and a platform > as Steam ๐ > - Including tons of useless privative applications in the Software > Center, all together along with the libre ones with no distinction ๐ > - The free software movement founder openly confronting Ubuntu ๐ > - Ubuntu.com sifting from rather speaking about values to features and > convenience, and by so not choosing to target market to the general public > but to the mindless ๐ > > So Ubuntu is just in the point it can become something great or just a big > deception. > > ๐ > > > El 09/05/13 14:45, Timothy Arceri escribiรณ: > > 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]> <[email protected]> > *To:* Ubuntu Papercuts Ninjas > <[email protected]><[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 > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~papercuts-ninja > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > >
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