+1 For GitHub and +1 for this initiative. I hope I can add value.
On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Sean Cribbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Radiant users and developers, > > Over the weekend I took the time to watch the presentation by Evan > Phoenix about Rubinius that was given at MountainWest RubyConf 2008, > available from confreaks.com (You should watch it, too!). I was mostly > interested in hearing where Rubinius was technically, but his talk took > a very different path in that it focused on how community is being > fostered in the project. His primary points were about encouraging > experimentation and lowering the bar of entry. Some of his comments > really struck home with me, which I'll paraphrase here: > > 1) A team of 'core committers' tends to stifle debate and > experimentation and marginalizes those who have differing opinions. > This also has the effect of slowing progress on the project when the > core team is unable to participate. If someone is enthusiastic about > contributing, that should be fostered, not squelched by a high barrier > to entry. > 2) If a project is open-source, it should be much more open than most > projects actually are. Rubinius gives 'commit bits' after the first > accepted patch. This promotes the feeling of a real community project, > rather than a closed, orchestrated one. > 3) Small changes often encompass some of the greatest effort. One > should allow small, incremental changes, no matter how tiny. > 4) It's ok to make mistakes. No one, even a 'core committer', is > infallible. Learn from your mistakes, document them, and move on. > > The pace of Radiant over the last few months has been slower than > snails. I want to remedy this. I also want to > make amends for the ways that I might have squelched dissent or > artificially slowed the progress of the project through over-engineering > the timeline and smashing potentially transformative ideas. > > To this end, I want to attempt an experiment. The first step is that I > would like to open up the codebase for more experimentation. I have > created a clone of the Radiant Subversion repository on GitHub > (http://github.com/seancribbs/radiant/tree/master). I encourage > everyone who is interested in hacking the Radiant codebase to fork it, > make your changes, and send me pull requests. During this experiment, > we will also be maintaining the traditional SVN repo and I will push > changes to it when necessary. For those who are familiar with 'git', > this should be an opportunity to try out that cool feature you've always > been wanting to build. That said, I'd like our basic ground-rule to > apply, namely, that any patch you submit should have adequate specs. > Although we like to pride ourselves on our specs, the coverage in > Radiant is still not exhaustive, so any patches that improve the quality > and quantity of specs are also greatly encouraged. > > The second step is that I am going to start restructuring my time to > give Radiant the TLC that it needs. I want to be a more nurturant > parent. Earlier this year, John Long asked me to take responsibility of > the programming aspects of the project so that he could focus on the > design. In recent weeks I have found that I am not logging a full > 40-hour week on my projects, and yet Radiant is not moving forward. > Therefore, I will block out one day a week (Friday) to spend tending to > Radiant. During this day each week, I will be developing the codebase, > addressing tickets and patches, and possibly working on a podcast. I > also intend to have "office hours" on the #radiantcms IRC channel on > FreeNode all day (8AM US Central to about 6PM). > > My hope is that both of these steps will give Radiant the shot in the > arm that it needs. I'd appreciate your thoughts and feedback. > > All the best, > > Sean Cribbs > > P.S. Incidentally, a solution to Josh French's problem with building a > project with the Radiant source in the root could be solved with > git-svn, allowing him to keep up to date with the source of Radiant > while building his own project in the same tree. Git is much more > powerful at managing multiple sources of changes. > _______________________________________________ > Radiant mailing list > Post: [email protected] > Search: http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/ > Site: http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant > _______________________________________________ Radiant mailing list Post: [email protected] Search: http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/search/ Site: http://lists.radiantcms.org/mailman/listinfo/radiant
