[Gnewsense-dev] recruitment and retention of gNewSense developers

[Delyan Raychev]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Partially triggered by own guilt, but primarily by the desire to grow 
the gNewSense project I've been contemplating on the scarce developer 
manpower here at the gNewSense project.

Busy class schedule, demanding boss, family, employment situation - we 
all have our reasons for not having enough time to work on FOSS and 
gNewSense in particular.

But I am confident we could increase manpower available for gNS work!


Here are a few question (perhaps to Karl and the rest of the devs here):

Would it be feasible to 'promote' the gNewSense project at Universities, 
local FOSS user groups and web-sites like OpenHatch.org with the clear 
goal of gaining developer man power?
(Not stealing from other projects - just adding new devs)

Would it be OK to recruit developers, chop up the dev work that needs to 
happen in small chunks and assign to devs.

Could we also use this e-mail list for mentoring/guidance/dispatching of 
the small jobs?

It is no easy task to finding girls and guys with true passion (vs. 
fever) for FOSS development and motivating them to do gratis work on 
libre projects.

I DO believe this is possible and very much would like to organize such 
effort starting with the local communities that I have access to... then 
also asking for your help - by you joining me and 
evangelizing/recruiting in our local areas.

Here is how I believe we can achieve this:
    - chop up all the development tasks in small chunks
    - document clearly what's needed / a theoretical way this could be 
achieved / any resources - point to repositories, contacts etc.
    - very roughly estimate the time needed for each task  (try to keep 
each task at about 12 hours or less, if possible)
    - create a list of jobs available - one for each task, describe 
what skills would be needed for finishing it
    - recruit people (perhaps teams of 2-3 collaborators) to work on 
each task

(With such list of 'jobs' I am certain I could provide the professors at 
the local large universities with 'extra-credit work' for their CS 
students...  But let's not get too far ahead just yet.)

Any comments, questions, suggestions?

Thank you!

Del
address@hidden