[gentoo-dev] Introduction to Gentoo Development Teams and Processes

Hello, 

My name is Michael Spall, although I prefer sirperc or Sir Perc in
general (don't ask).
I am interested in joining in with the dvelopment of Gentoo, I am
capable of programming, although it is not my main area of interest.
Instead I am better at Design, Organization and Testing.

I would be interested in working with the documentation team, I've
signed up to the Documentation List, although it's a little quiet at the
moment and my familiarity with Gentoo is a little low at the moment.
I would also be interested in working to help formulate team dynamics,
better team co-operation and general administration of the entire
project.

Effectively if anybody has anything simplet hat you wish to be done then
please don't hesitate to email me, I'm happy to take some of those mind
numbingly boring tasks off of your hands at the moment, mostly things
like writing up documentation, composing web pages and such work.

Hope to hear from some of you soon.

My initial ideas, I am not aware of which ones have been discussed and
which haven't so apologies if these have been discussed and discarded:

1. A split between the user/newbies and other support lists and the
Development lists
At the moment the majority of traffic on the dev and doc lists seems to
be people asking questions that would be jsut as appropriate, or more so
in the user and newbie lists.
I would suggest the closure of list subscription for the development
lists to accepted developers, a web based submission form could allow
people to submit their requests for developer status.
Also this would allow the list to be set to only accepting emails from
subscribers, further reducing the badn width wastage on the list.

2. A recruitment process to get some regular posters on the users/newbie
lists to form a newbie / questions team.  developers would help out, and
the team would be more dedicated to providing accurate answers to the
posts for help on the users lists.
Again a support website could be set up, with a FAQ section (something
sorely missing), a system for listing available support members and
systems for rewarding those members in various forms.

3. The seperation and development of a team based strategy towards the
development of the whole system.  That is to say that whole sections
would form teams, somehwat like the desktop and doc teams have at the
moment but with more formalised processes.
Each team should have their own website and email list, supporting TODO
lists, their own bug-lists, and other features as necessary.
Each team should have highly visible team leaders, directing the goals
of the team, and should have clearly written team definition documents.

I have lots of little ideas in addition, some of which will probably
laughed at (Hey I'm used to it, so feel fine to point and laugh :-) )
however my main concern in gentoo is that there is no set system for
submitting new ideas for the whole system.

Ah well I hope that you dont rip these ideas apart too badly :), but
please criticise where necessary, and tell me I'm wrong where I am
wrong.

-- 
This email was written by Sir Perc (Mr M. Spall) and should be accompanied by a signature for checking with PGP, available at http://www.pgpi.org
My PGP Key is available with the email address sirperc@×××××.com