Hi Kenneth, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: > In my experience, and from observation I > find that sustained long term contributors to a project almost > invariably come from people who start out as users of the project/app.
<snip> I agree with your characterisation of things for "volunteer" (for lack of a better word) developers. However, there is a large & growing number of free software developers who do not discover free software projects like this, and that is professional software developers. We should also (I would say *especially*, since I'm not too worried about the people who organically discover projects) cater to them. The things which we should be educating people about are: For managers/executives: * Before deciding to build on a free software component, how do you evaluate the health of the community? * The cost/benefit analysis of maintaining a delta in the case of: 1. Branching off stable (read: old) versions of software & fixing it to suit your needs 2. Branching off the latest version of the software & fixing it to suit your needs 3. Working in the community to have your needs addressed in the upstream software For developers: * How to get over a fear of mailing lists (the number of professional developers I know who are not comfortable with written English is frightening - and that includes native speakers!) * OK so I have to work on this stuff... how do I get patches upstream? * People in glasshouses... How to develop a feature in the open without having design by committee/bikeshed discussions/stop energy. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
