Hi Bonnie, Bonnie MacKellar wrote: > Mark Guzdial’s blog on computer science education has a somewhat > negative post today on the usefulness of involving undergrads in open > source development. He says that while students may be getting good > experience working with a large codebase, they aren’t getting access to > the extablished developer community. Anyone care to comment on this? > > http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/oss-is-led-by-an-elitist-circle-and-newcomers-dont-get-access/#comments
I've described this phenomenon before a couple of times. I think of a free software community as being kind of like an onion, with a small number of very key people setting the culture and technical direction of a project (and doing most of the work), and outside this layers of people working on the project because of that culture and technical vision, working to support the goals of the project: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2009/04/01/how-do-you-count-your-community-size/ And I think in mentorship it is difficult to remember what it was like to be a beginner, or to see the obvious barriers to participation, unless you're close to that experience. So I suggest that recently mentored community members should (if they have the aptitude) become mentors very quickly. I had some other suggestions for project leaders on designing mentorship programs: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/05/31/effective-mentoring-programs/ In short, I don't believe that there is a ghettoisation of project newcomers, or a clique of project insiders, by design. Projects are like any other regular social gathering (think PTA, chess club, political party, etc.) - you are coming into an existing social hierarchy, and the usual way that you gain access and meet people is through a social sponsor - someone who takes you under their wing, introduces you around, figures out what your skills & interests are, and puts you with the best person so that you will integrate well into the group. And that's the way I see mentors. And I would agree if you said that most projects don't do this very well. But I would also say that it's unreasonable to expect to become part of the core group without first understanding the culture and politics of the group, and getting to know the people who were there before you. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
