Hi :) I think we do need at least 1 paid senior dev/team-leader to start working on Base asap. I think other people would join without feeling so dismayed or overwhelmed if they knew there was someone paid to support/mentor them.
Allegedly there are a few organisations that 'support' LibreOffice and for most of them it might be a huge advantage to get Base nearer to it's potential. Base is a blocker to using RedHat or Ubuntu so they might be willing to part-fund a post. The various independent back-end projects might be willing to part-fund a post or their devs might be willing (perhaps even keen) to work on Base. Some of that does seem to be a question of marketing. "How to attract devs to Base". Regards from Tom :) --- On Wed, 14/9/11, Alexander Thurgood <alex.thurg...@gmail.com> wrote: From: Alexander Thurgood <alex.thurg...@gmail.com> Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] Re: Recruitment for Base (Was Re: [steering-discuss] Base - a new mailing list?) To: marketing@global.libreoffice.org Date: Wednesday, 14 September, 2011, 15:27 Le 14/09/11 15:05, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit : Hi Charles, > The second point is about recruitment of developers. I hope that I'm not > making myself a mistake in assuming that what is being understood is to > actually hire developers... perhaps what is meant is attracting > developers? In any case, we cannot mandate developers to work on > something like we would do in a company. It's a big difference between a > business and a FOSS community and project. Developers join by > themselves, provided the information is there. Exactly, my comment as to the requirements of a developer were more in line with "if a volunteer wants to step up this is how high the barrier to entry is going to be", and not at all a view to hiring a developer, which as you mention, is not something that really happens in FOSS projects (or else, only on rare occasions). > > I must admit I am myself very, very unclear on what we are trying to > achieve with Base. And it's not just now, it's always been the case (for > me, at least). Base was added to Openoffice.org as a new module and the > whole experience was suboptimal. Well my memory is obviously slightly older than yours because I remember the days of OOo 1.1.x and prior to that with StarOffice, where databases were already accessible, where forms could be designed and made, and queries designed and run. I even designed a switchboard document with buttons that let me link and switch to forms for data entry. The rest, as they say, is history, and after some humming and hahing by Sun we ended up with the Base module as we currently know/love/hate it. > mean time. The result now is not that we have developers not doing > anything on Base (in fact, we do). The result is that there are less > resources on this because developers are simply less interested in > acting on it, and there's nothing we can force them to do (or not do). Quite. > > Hence, one thing that might help -and this is very much a call for > brainstorm, with the hope that we collect expectations about Base- is to > gather feedback from users, see what we can understand from their use, > or non-use of Base, and not being afraid to ask some real questions. I actually think this would be a good idea : it was, after all (at least that is what we were led to believe), the results of a user survey that goaded Sun into action about designing Base2 (as opposed to maintaining/improving the then existing database capability). > > As an example: should Base be scrapped off? Should we use it as a front > end to another DB? should we try to compete with Access? Should it be > geared towards a more complete usage (read: integrated as a front end to > enterprise DB); is it enough to squash the reported bugs on Base? etc. > > After that survey we can a) analyze the results b) take action in two > forms: suggestions to the broader community (devs included) or writing a > set of RFEs (Request For Enhancement). RFEs are something developers can > work with. You may call them hacks, but the point is this; you describe > in technical and functional terms, step by step, what a feature should > be. Not just "It should be able to compete with Access" or "it should be > red". But rather: "description of feature, rationale, behaviour, usage > scenario, etc.". > If a survey were to see the light of day, it would need to have the broadest possible communication, as the majority of Base users I know are not actually on any of the LibO lists, or at least their voices are not often to be heard. It would be interesting to hear what people still using OOo feel too, because on the Apache lists, IBM, for one, appears to have no real interest in a sophisticated frontend solution (they got rid of it completely in Symphony). So whilst the general discussion about Base could well be carried out on the discuss list, it would be good for discussions about making a survey to be kept here IMO. Alex -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
