Hi David, Am 20.03.2024 um 01:16 schrieb David Blevins:
Are there others in Bert's position who have employer support to contribute but aren't sure where to start?
I'm sort of... I am self-employed, this means if I'm deciding to contribute to the project it more or less will be part of my 'job'. So I will have the employer support as I am the employer ;-)
One problem is: I'm dependent to my customers and to running projects and deadlines. So even if I'm the employer I do not have complete control over my spare times. And this means, in order to not burn out, there may be times (in the range from days to several weeks) where I won't be able to contribute one minute to the project. And then there may be times at which I will be able to contribute several hours a week.
Another problem is: I'm afraid, I will have to learn quite a bunch of things before I will be of any real help to the project. Although I'm already doing some JSF Appliactions my knowledge of the EE universe/specifications is limited. Up to now it's more cherry picking the stuff I need for my projects.
So.... I really would like to contribute to the project, but it may turn out that eventually I will not have enough time or will fail in understanding all the EE specifications and their dependencies. And because I know that it will be additional work for you and the other active contributors to educate me (or at least give helping hands here and there), I'm hesitating.
But: if we are able to find some more people like me and Bert (means: want to help but aren't sure if they will be able to and where to start) it may be worth the effort of building some sort of "how to start contributing to tomee" documentation based on the experience with us. I see two advantages: 1) You may be more comfortable to invest your time in teaching us, because there is the chance that at least one or two of the group will stay and contribute to the project. 2) This can create some sort of basic "HowTo start..." documentation as a side effect. This alone would raise the chances to get new contributors in the future. Because don't underestimate the effect of being able to test and play around "alone in the basement, without somebody looking over your shoulder". But for this, somebody would need some starter in form of a short document with "you need this... a) b) c)..." and "you should look here...1) 2) 3).....". Means lowering the "inhibition threshold" so that an interested person can dig into it without the need to first register to a mailing list or the like.
So, yes, if we find some more people, I would be happy to participate as a "trainee in a training group".
cu Jens
