Hi all, Long time lurker, I'm de-lurking because I like to harp on a bit about how to run a successful open source project (based off Karl Fogel's teachings at http://producingoss.org) - got to love opinionated lurkers right? ;p
My comments in-line below: >> * Open up access to the community somehow (suggested by Kristian) >> >> * Draw in more developers to core (suggested by John) I typically see this being successful when there are readily accessible issue trackers, documentation, developer guidelines, a community manager (or several) and more. In order to not scare a new developer away from something difficult (like Maven core), you want them to grok it in a day or so by supplying: * A 30,000 foot view * A "how to build and run" the core * A list of _really_ simple bug fixes that new developers can try out so they can follow the development process. My favourite is to say "Hey, we just switched on Findbugs - and there are 3 issues to fix in class X". The feeling of accomplishment that a new developer will get from successfully making a change is really, really important. * Crucially they need some really patient community leads/managers/whatever to be there for them in real-time. This is the hardest part. Maven already has some of this stuff covered, which is great! But I think it's perhaps lacking a little in the documentation around the core and maybe some more dedicated community managers/leads/whatever wouldn't go amiss either. A really good example of great interaction is with the ossrh mailing list with Juven as the de-facto community manager. He's so quick and polite to respond to issues that users volunteers start responding in kind and get involved (in my case the tiniest of doc patches, but hey I wouldn't have normally bothered). Remember, every user/developer is a potential volunteer :-). >> * apply patches from people that genuinely can help (suggested by Brett) I think the applying or rejecting of patches could be sped up (from my anecdotal watching of JIRAs over the past year). It can help to have a dedicated person for this, quick response times to patches means a much higher chance of having that user/developer join the project! >> I think we need to create documentation that is accessible from the >> main site. Perhaps the tooling isn't quite there to do that easily. >> Personally I'd love to see a beginners walkthrough of how maven is >> architected with diagrams and links to the code. This would be brilliant. > Yes, documentation is the bane of most open-source projects...and we > certainly have a weakness there. Part of the documentation needs to be > fueled by a wish list from the community though...I'm too close to things > personally to know which parts aren't easy to understand. :-) <blatantly looking a Sonatype>Interns can be really useful in these sorts of situations (where you have to play catch-up on the docs)</blatantly looking at Sonatype> Feel free to ignore any of the above - I just couldn't resist sticking my nose in. Cheers, Martijn - (Maven fan - most of the time ;p) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
