Dear All, Recently I started a thread drawing attention to the large number of folks who have submitted packages for review and require sponsorship, and the length of time some of those sponsorship requests have been outstanding. A number of people (notably Ben Rosser and Michael Schwendt) eloquently shared perspectives on this from the perspective of a new contributor who recently sought sponsorship, and long time contributors and sponsors feeling somewhat burnt out by the review/sponsorship processes. It was very pleasing to see the thought and time people put into those responses, so thank you.
I'd like to attempt to distil some of that discussion, and offer some thoughts on how we might improve things. 1) Fedora as a project has evolved massively from the early days, when contributors were part of the Fedora Extras project, in terms of culture, goals, tooling, nature of its contributors, processes and documentation. In that time, one thing that has changed very little in the midst of all that is the sponsorship process. 2) Improving the sponsorship process in terms of attracting new contributors rather than leaving them discouraged with long waits for sponsorship would surely be a big win for the project. 3) There's a very strong feeling (that I too share) that we don't wish to achieve (2) at the expense quality and commitment of contributors (by eg. allowing drive by packaging, and packages of low quality). So, how might we change the sponsorship process to reduce burn out of sponsors and reviewers, and avoid discouraging would-be contributors? Here are some suggestions I'd like to make, and I'd welcome thoughts on these, and other suggestions too. I am hopeful we can then come up with a solid proposal for an improved process. 1) One piece of tooling we now have that is ideal for new contributors is COPR. We should make more of this as it is an ideal proving ground for new packagers with the benefit that it allows these contributors to put their contributions into the hands of users and reviewers quickly and easily, and so feel the warm glow of contributing - this should not be underestimated - to attract and keep new contributors we need them to feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement as soon as possible in the process so they stay motivated. 2) We now have the possibility of obtaining sponsorship through co-maintaining packages, but that's somewhat low profile and less used as a route to sponsorship (just an impression-I have no data on this). So, rather than the initial entry point for new contributors being to submit a new package review request, it looked more like this: Hi, it's great that you want to contribute to the Fedora project, and drive it forward. Here's how to become a contributor: 1) Develop some new packages for software you want to see in Fedora in a COPR repository to demonstrate your package creation and maintenance skills. Keeping the packages up to date and of a high quality and in compliance with current guidelines and practices is what you're aiming for here. Also apply to co-maintain a package or two that are currently in Fedora so you can learn from our experienced packagers. 3) When you think your COPR repository is looking like it has packages of a high standard in it and they're ready to transition to Fedora proper, and you feel you have gained sufficient experience to become a fully fledged packager, contact the sponsors mailing list detailing your portfolio of packaging experience and asking someone work with you to transition a package or two from your COPR into the project. Once your sponsor is happy with your level of expertise and commitment, you'll become a fully fledged contributor. In other words, rather than a package review ticket being the entry point for new contributors, make COPR and co-maintainership combined the entry point. So, that's something we could do with current tooling. But, I was also thinking of how things could be improved if COPR was tied into Bodhi somehow. The badges system that we have hooked into Bodhi is mostly a bit of fun at the moment. But, actually, if somehow that badges system were available to COPR, then we'd have quite a nice way to track new contributors activity, and could even require certain badges to be achieved before the sponsorship could be approved. What I have in mind here is that each COPR could (optionally) itself have an updates and an updates-testing repo like the real Fedora repos, and activity tracked through badges. Thoughts from the COPR folks? Cheers, Jonathan. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
