Hi Ihor,
I'd love to help out with Org-mode on the mailing lists and elsewhere.
Count me in for ~2-3 emails a week to start with.
Cheers!
On 4/24/26 15:05, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
Dear all,
TL;DR: We are looking for volunteers who are ready to help with initial
review of 4 to 8 bugs, patches, or feature requests every month.
No deep Elisp skills required; just being kind. "Initial review" can be
as simple as marking new emails for our bug tracker by replying with
"Confirmed." in email body to bug reports.
-----
For the last couple of years, even before I became the official Org
maintainer, I wanted to make sure that Org mode bugs, patches, and
feature requests that come to the mailing list (and even outside the
mailing list - on Reddit, Emacs China, GitHub, etc) are not left
unanswered. I strongly believe that keeping our user and developer
community connected is the key to keep Org mode live in the long term
[1]. And it worked quite nicely. At least, I am pretty sure that the
overwhelming majority of the requests coming to the mailing list at
least got /some/ answer. If not from me, then from other active community
members, like Pedro A. Aranda, Max Nikulin, Rudolf Adamkovič, Christian
Moe, Sébastien Gendre, Karthik Chikmagalur, Juan Manuel Macías, Derek
Chen-Becker, Morgan Smith, Visuwesh, Jacob S. Gordon, David Masterson,
Leo Butler, Samuel Wales, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide, Jack Kamm, and
others (yeah, we have many great people here, and this list could
keep going).
Even with the help of the community, the number of bug reports and
patches coming to the mailing list require considerable time to
process. It was not a problem for the period when I was working on Org
full time, but not now, when I need to balance my main job with the Org
maintenance. I still do manage to handle all the bugs, patches, and
requests coming to the list, but I realized that I do not really have
much time to do anything else. That means - no complex refactoring and
no new features, except contributed by others.
This made me think of the old idea we had in the past - contributor
liaisons [2]. If we had a couple of volunteers who could commit a few
hours per month to replying to simple bug reports, patches, and feature
requests, it would allow me to focus on more difficult tasks.
(Side note: the original term was "contributor steward", but the EU
Cyber Resilience Act [3] now gives "open-source software steward"
a specific legal meaning, so I came up with "contributor liaison".)
-----
If you care about Org mode and want to help the community and
development, please volunteer by replying to this email.
You do not need to have deep Elisp knowledge or commit a lot of free
time. If you are familiar with Org mode, and you are ready to be
welcoming to the contributors, that's good enough. I also expect
regular but small commitment, or a notice if you are unavailable
temporarily or decide to step down (no explanation needed).
Note that you do not have to commit indefinitely or all year round. Just
let me know about the schedule you are most comfortable with and how
many bugs/patches you are ready to handle (4-8 per month is a good
number). You also do not have to start now; you can just reply and tell
when you can allocate free time.
There are already a couple of patches and bug reports submitted this
week that need a reply.
And, of course, if there are any questions, they are always welcome.
-----
Org mode receives around 55 bugs/patches/feature requests every month.
If we have a handful of people helping with 1-2 reports per week, we can
cover most of the reports.
Before writing this announcement, I prepared detailed instructions about
where to get started and how to review bug reports, patches, and feature
requests. See [4] -- everything can be done with or without Elisp
knowledge, and at various time investments. Every little bit helps.
I also (secretly) hope that people who volunteer to be contributor
liaisons can eventually (if they wish!) learn more and take on more
serious maintenance work or contribute in other ways.
[1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-maintenance.html#community
[2] https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/[email protected]/
[3]
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32024R2847#art_3
[4] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-maintenance.html#liaison --
the page also links to new detailed sections on handling bug reports
and patches at https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contribute.html
