Thanks, Ian and Sean, first for publishing this Gobby notes, and then for the interesting idea exchange that resulted. I wanted to answer to Ian's mail on this same topic, but then Sean started writing things that I resonate with... So, the original text posted by Ian (to which Ian claims no authorship, of course) said:
> We are not doing well at attracting younger developers into the
> community. It can be very difficult to get younger people to attend
> because of the tendancy for younger people to be very
> self-conscious.
But... Most of us joined when we were perfectly classifiable as
"young". So, something has clearly changed in a project that attracted
twenty-somethingers twenty years ago...?
So, Sean says something quite similar to what I was thinking:
> Firstly, I intended to say more in my previous message about why we're
> having difficulty attracting younger developers. The reason I wrote
> that d-mentors is very different to d-devel was to make the point that
> self-consciousness probably isn't the reason we're having difficulty
> with younger developers. The kind of venues where new contributors
> engage are places where it /is/ comfortable to be wrong about something,
> so that's probably not why we're struggling.
>
> Secondly, let me suggest why I think we're having difficulty attracting
> younger developers. The issue is that patience is probably the number
> one virtue required for enjoying working in Debian, and young people are
> often impatient. I suspect that things like GitHub have made this
> worse. People get used to getting excited feedback on their pull
> requests made against fly-by-night JavaScript projects. Then they
> package something for Debian, and it takes two months before someone
> reviews it.
Yes. The Debian culture is cast around older tools. We work mostly via
(plain-text!) email and IRC. And yes, I will argue (and even prove, as
we did for an online conference ~10 years ago, where IRC was proven
better than any other alternatives because of many small details) that
they are much better suited to our work than that newfangled,
mobile-friendly, over-AJAXy technologies that lure youngsters
nowadays. I really doubt we will change our use of tools, but that is
an important hurdle to attract newcomers: Our way of communication
smells like it's 1995. And we like it to be uphill both ways.
The examples you give on d-mentors are quite interesting; I wouldn't
be able to tell, as I haven't been on that {list,channel} since I
don't have enough free time to do it (many years alreaedy).
There have been several attempts to bring a fresher interface to how
we coordinate and how users approach us; I can only think about
initiatives such as ask.debian.net, which is used and valuable, but
has IMO failed to gather critical mass; I have never seen my search
engine direct me to ask.d.n for any question, and it's only in the
back of my mind as a place I should someday try to look at...
When many of us joined (in my case, early 2000s), Free Software was a
strongly counter-cultural way to do something creative and challenge
the system. When I started getting involved with it (mid 1990s), it
was something our teachers never even imagined. That's a great way to
lure young people in... But nowadays, we are the teachers and, to a
given extent, we are the system — Free software has been there since
always. Free software runs the biggest enterprises in the world. What
is there that attracts young minds to us? Our superior package
management, or our beautiful policies?
So... Well, I also don't intend to present a solution, just a brain
dump (hopefully not following by the full core and a segfault) :)
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