Re: [Gnewsense-dev] recruitment and retention of gNewSense developers

[Karl Goetz]

On Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:12:20 -0400
Delyan Raychev <address@hidden> wrote:

> 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.

sing it brother ;)

> 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)

Possible? Yes. If someone puts the time in.

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

Sure, we call these 'bug reports', and we provide a list of them here:
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=gnewsense

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

As long as the questions stay gns specific (eg, working on gns
problems) then i'm all for it.

> 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

and give everyone a pony \o/ :)

>      - document clearly what's needed / a theoretical way this could
> be achieved / any resources - point to repositories, contacts etc.

used to be, has fallen by the wayside as we've tried to move away from
our old systems.

>      - very roughly estimate the time needed for each task  (try to
> keep each task at about 12 hours or less, if possible)

needs someone with a good knowledge of the task at hand - we don't have
that for a lot of our bugs.

>      - create a list of jobs available - one for each task, describe 
> what skills would be needed for finishing it

imo this should be the bts. if details are missing, they should be
added to the tickets.

>      - recruit people (perhaps teams of 2-3 collaborators) to work on 
> each task

what 'we' does this - the person taking it on, or 'someone else'?

> (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.)

If your local uni's provide projects like the ones i know of here, they
won't be all that interested :)
kk

> Any comments, questions, suggestions?
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Del
> address@hidden


-- 
Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS)
Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer
http://www.kgoetz.id.au
No, I won't join your social networking group

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