Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Attracting developers (Re: Packages up for grabs...)

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 12/16/2012 01:27 PM, Duncan wrote:
> Michael Orlitzky posted on Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:20:10 -0500 as excerpted:
>
>> On 12/16/2012 12:02 PM, Fabian Groffen wrote:
>>> On 16-12-2012 11:57:35 -0500, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
>>>> 3. Get off CVS for Christ's sake. Nobody wants to work with that.
>>>> I don't know how this fits into my bullet list, but it's important.
>>>
>>> It doesn't, and it's not.
>>>
>> I'm not going to put together a powerpoint presentation for you, but
>> think about it this way.
>>
>> Many new developers who want to contribute to to some project will learn
>> git, because a large number of important projects use git. No (new)
>> developers are going to learn CVS. Ever.
>>
>> Therefore, we can rule out "using CVS is helping us attract new
>> developers."
>
> I agree getting off of CVS is important in that it's likely triggering a
> writeoff of gentoo from the list of potential volunteers before they even
> get to where we see them, but AFAIK, the switch to git /is/ making (slow)
> progress.  One of the big blockers was apparently taken care of via
> bounty (relatively) recently, and I don't think they'd have spent the
> money on that if they believed it to be pouring that money down a rathole.
>
> Before finding out about that, I too had despaired of the git transition
> being anything but "bluesky", but that's concrete indication that
> /somebody/ is still working on it, and that it's considered important
> enough for the gentoo foundation to spend money on.
>

Thanks. I know progress has been made and I didn't mean to belittle that
effort. But I know I'm not alone in thinking CVS deters new people.


>
> Meanwhile, I'm not sure how practical your bounty for recruiting spruceup
> is, since much of that work's likely to require intimate knowledge of
> gentoo and recruiting to approve, if not to actually do, and that level
> of knowledge is apparently in short supply, or recruiting wouldn't be the
> bottleneck it seems to be.
>

True. I've observed that the sunrise and proxy-maint projects already do
a lot of this work. The quality of ebuilds that get past review in
either situation is on average higher than that of those which don't.

I hate to criticize without offering a suggestion, so here's a wild one:
pay someone from the recruiters, sunrise, and/or proxy-maint teams to
recruit and train new developers. Pay them a reasonable wage, say,
$15-20/hr. out of the foundation to actively recruit new people.

We fix the recruitment docs, and make the homepage attractive. Then we
put out press releases on Slashdot, Reddit, etc. and announce to
gentoo-users@g.o that we're looking to train new developers. Send them
to the new docs, which will in turn tell them to,

  * Be familiar with gentoo system administration

  * Know the devmanual forwards and backwards

  * Practice committing ebuilds to an overlay

  * Submit ebuilds for review in #gentoo-sunrise and #gentoo-dev-help

  * Learn CVS (ugh)

  ...

  * Contact the guy we're paying to mentor people, who will then train,
    test, and recruit him.

You'll get tons of new developers. In the long-term, that's a highly
effective use of the money.

Most of the day-to-day work that needs done is not life-threatening. If
we can get people wrangling bugs, bumping packages, and communicating
with upstream, it will make a big difference.


> I don't know how important a general gentoo web page redesign might be (I
> think what's there is perfectly functional and great), but you're
> certainly correct on the content itself; anything still mentioning
> looking for openings in the weekly newsletter is... anachronistic I think
> is the term.  Have you checked for and filed if necessary, a bug on that?
>

I have some specific suggestions for the homepage, but in general I
think it just needs to look like it wasn't made in 2001. We need to look
attractive to attract things. I hope that's not controversial too!

And yeah, yeah, I'll go file bugs =)