Hi Paolo,
thanks for your reply and additional explanations!
On 24/02/2022 16.56, Paolo Vecchi wrote:
Yes the initial plan is to look at the general areas and then the team
will work out with the developers which bugs they can start tackling on
their own, with mentoring and/or with experts support.
That sounds reasonable.
FWIW, for a11y, a blind user with whom I got into contact via LO's
a11y mailing list has also made a personal ranking of issues related
to using LO with the NVDA screen reader on Windows that he'll most
probably be happy to share with anybody who's interested.
Are those issues that could be filed as bugs?
The interest is surely there, let me check the best way to have it
posted somewhere so that it will be evaluated for internal development
and/or tendering.
The ranking was actually for bugs that are already in either LO Bugzilla
or NVDA's Github issue tracker.
For the LO Bugzilla, this was a subset of the bugs *directly or
indirectly* blocking the general a11y meta bug tdf#101912 that I
mentioned in my previous email. [1]
More exactly, it were the tickets set as *directly* blocking for the
Windows-specific a11y meta bug tdf#60251, the general a11y meta bug
tdf#101912 or the sidebar a11y meta bug tdf#103440; Bugzilla query: [2]
(Note how the first link contains direct and indirect dependencies,
while the second doesn't, so the second is a subset of the first one.)
For NVDA's issue tracker, it were those bugs that have a
LibreOffice/OpenOffice-related tag/label.
Many issues have been reported in both issue trackers and the table maps
those to each other.
My own focus for having developers would be less to "compensate
eventual other drops in contributions" (p. 4), since I think the goal
there should rather be to ensure an environment where others,
including ecosystem companies, are happy to start/continue
contributing (more) - which is also explicitly listed as a goal.
The focus is surely to increase the number of contributors and to help
ecosystem companies in being successful with business models that bring
benefits to them, TDF, LibreOffice and the wider community.
In the document you'll notice that I also wrote "clearly indicates that
we need to work to foster new contributors with the help of new in-house
developers and mentors."
Yes, that's what my "which is also explicitly listed as a goal" was
referring to (but which maybe wasn't really clear in my email), and I
think that's definitely an important aspect. And from what I understood,
this also seemed to be uncontroversial in the BoD meeting about the topic.
The in-house developers are actually part of the strategy to help
current and new contributors. Learning by doing (fixing bugs) will help
those developers in helping others following the same path while getting
rid of issues that commercial contributors and volunteers have overlooked.
That sounds very good to me.
Regarding app stores (p. 5), IIRC, Michael (Meeks) suggested to
separate that topic from the current discussion, which I think makes
sense.
I think it would make sense to focus on identifying non-controversial
areas that should be worked on (e.g. what's listed as "Focus areas"
from page 6 on) and then see how internal developers could help there,
but also leave room to discuss potential alternative solutions.
The first part of the document presents the general strategy and the app
stores are part of it. Surely we should start with creating an initial
team that starts working on the "Focus Areas" but once they are settled
and productive we should consider fulfilling our mission for users that
are locked into app stores or just find it more convenient to used them
instead of downloading LibreOffice Community from our site.
The topic isn't that controversial as it has been discussed at length in
public and within the board.
Even if my preference is to have TDF running the app stores, so that we
can reinvest not only in development but also in other projects that
help the wider community, there are still 2 proposals for business
entities that would do just that and the members of the ecosystem are
perfectly fine with it.
Thanks for the explanation. My main concern was that "trying to do too
many things at the same time" would potentially make finding a consensus
harder.
Regarding interoperability with MSO (p. 6), I don't have the
impression that this is in general a neglected topic that would
necessarily need special attention from TDF side at this point (in
addition to what's already happening e.g. via tenders).
The link that you provided for the metabug seems to show that there are
a couple of bugs or three that need some attention.
Certainly! There is certainly enough work to engage a multitude of
developers in this area (and others). My thought was that - other than
other topics mentioned - it generally seems to be less of a "niche" area
in which there is generally little interest from others at the moment.
Which of course doesn't necessarily disqualify it to be something that
TDF might still want to put more focus on.
(Besides the possibility to work on that by employing TDF developers,
that topic might alternatively also fit the regular tender process
better than other topics; both approaches certainly have their pros and
cons.)
Our goals include "Science and research, particularly in the field of
computer science" so the creation of a dedicated development team will
allow us to push deeper into areas of research and contribution to
LibreOffice development and with those acquired skills we can extend
further our other goal which is "Public and professional education".
Over time that could lead to the creation of new events and training
material that can be shared to help further potential contributors.
Thanks for the additional explanation, that sounds reasonable.
Best regards,
Michael
[1]
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=101912&hide_resolved=1
[2]
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?f1=blocked&list_id=1424027&o1=anywordssubstr&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=60251%20101912%20103440
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