Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi. On Mo, 2015-05-25 at 21:16 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. This is also my impression. In addition to what others have noted, I think this goes along with GNOME going more professional. I think that it would be better if we had more non-professional contributors, but more in the sense that we always want and need more contributors. In order to achieve that I think we're doing what we can, e.g. be present at events like FOSDEM, have a good story for new contributors, enabling people to collaborate in person. Cheers, Tobi ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 09:16:02PM -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I do agree with your impression, though I don't necessarily consider that a bug. I think it's a feature that many people get paid to work on GNOME. However, I do think one of the incredible strengths of Free Software is that anyone can contribute, regardless of who they work for. And I think it's critical that GNOME retain that property. A project that has an extensive set of paid contributors but alienates its community contributors can rot from the root upward without fresh minds and viewpoints joining in. (If nothing else, where does one hire new paid contributors *from* if not the comunity?) I do not believe GNOME systematically suffers from that problem, but I have seen signs of it here and there. The biggest thing I would suggest that GNOME do: ensure that development, planning, and design of *all* GNOME projects occurs in the open. It's not enough to push commits to a public repository if taking part in a project requires being part of the right private meeting. Projects considered part of GNOME should ensure that the community has visibility into where those projects are going, and an opportunity to influence that direction. That doesn't mean projects need to support incessant bikeshedding, nor does it mean projects must follow a Linux-kernel-style wherever the contributions may lead us evolutionary policy, but whatever vision a project follows should be transparent to all prospective contributors. If one or more companies are driving the development of a project and are not interested in participating in an open development process, they can host their periodic-code-drop project on their own site and not call it part of GNOME. Related to that, any project considered part of GNOME is ultimately a collaborative part of the GNOME community, and not the personal fiefdom of an individual maintainer. The primary job of a maintainer is to apply good taste, which *does* mean saying no quite often, but there should always be a reason, and it should never be because we're working on something behind the scenes that we can't tell you about or let you work on, go away. I'm not going to point fingers at any particular project here, but I have heard from many people who have become frustrated trying to contribute to nominally GNOME projects due to problems like those. - Josh Triplett ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sri, I think you already know my opinion on this, I completely agree with you, and I think is a serious issue not being able to reach those hobbyist and beginners people that can make the difference in GNOME to stay competitive or vanish. Because now, in my vision, most of new people that wants to participate in a community requires and wants a different set of things than 10 years ago, and if we don't reach those people, GNOME will remain relying on only paid people, who were the brave enough at some point to not give up contributing to GNOME, but the usage of GNOME also depends on how hobbyist are attracted to participate and how good our community is, and we need to evolution GNOME contribution platform and community to reach them. The ideas I have in mind to improve the situation are stated in my candidacy email, since as you could observe it is, and has been, a top goal for me. Cheers, Carlos Soriano - Original Message - | It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no | data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME | than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those | who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community | even if they were not paid. | | If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help | increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of | GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and | dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we | have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you | are interested in. | | If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is | not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data | points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving | you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. | | sri | ___ | foundation-list mailing list | foundation-list@gnome.org | https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list | ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. ... Personally, I do see new contributors getting involved, so I'm wary of making judgments about declining participation. However, encouraging participation is vital whatever the situation, and this is something that I would like the Board to focus on, if it is able. Encouraging participation is a big, complex question, which touches on pretty much everything we do as a project, so it is not something that the Board can address on its own. However, there are areas of Board work that are relevant, and things that the Board could do to help... The Engagement Team is key to enabling participation, since advertising the great things happening in the GNOME project is an important part of attracting contributors. So, the Board needs to ensure that the Engagement Team is doing well. This is traditionally a responsibility of the ED, so this is another reason to make sure that the hiring process moves ahead. Once hired, we will also need to make sure that the ED focuses on the Engagement Team, and if they aren't able to, or we aren't able to hire an ED in a timely fashion, we should think about other measures. The other thing the Board should do is support any community initiatives in this area. Suggesting hackfests and providing funds is an obvious possibility here (we should definitely make sure that the Developer Experience Hackfests continue to be a regular event). It will be vital for the Board to have an awareness of what is happening in the project at large for this to happen, and I think that I can help with that. Finally, as I mentioned in one of my previous emails, I would really like the Board to be more proactive, and this is a good example of a strategic area where it could provide leadership and energy. For example, if we identify a particular area that is lacking or blocking (such as development tools or documentation), the Board could coordinate to ensure that the gap is plugged, or it could even invest funds or do fundraising to help. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
On Mon, 2015-05-25 at 21:16 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. I'll echo Alexandre's response. The reason we have so many paid contributors is because people get jobs as a result of their work as volunteers. This is a Good Thing(TM). I don't think we have a problem, but I do think we need to be aware of the situation to ensure we don't have a problem. We need to make sure that decisions aren't made around the water cooler, that things are communicated on mailing lists, and that we have a welcoming environment for new contributors. One of the best uses of the Foundation's funds, in my opinion, is paying for volunteer contributors to attend hackfests. Hackfests are more than just working sessions. They're where decisions are made and community is built. People should not be locked out of them just because they can't afford to attend. -- Shaun ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sriram, On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 9:16 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I neither agree nor disagree with your impression :-) I think it's true that GNOME has more reliance on paid people in some areas, and the opposite in other areas: in particular, development and design of some specific core parts of the user experience (gnome-shell, gnome-control-center, nautilus among others) is mostly carried out by people paid for that job - but the GNOME community is much wider than that. In other words, I question the assumption that increasing participation in GNOME necessarily equals to increasing the number of non-paid people working on those few core modules; to some extent it's only natural that large, important features on those modules will be driven forward by those that are paid to do so, since they're those able to commit to getting them done by release time. A few more thoughts: - the initiatives and hackfests around Developer Experience go in the right direction of lowering the entry barrier to develop for our platform. I believe application development is a great way to attract new people to our community - a better one than core OS development in fact - and I will support efforts in that direction. - the Every Detail Matters initiative (and Gnome Love before then) has been very successful in bringing new contributors to some of the core areas of the OS. I think we as a community should do more of them and in a more systematic way, but they requires a lot of time and effort to set up. Cosimo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi, On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 6:16 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna s...@ramkrishna.me wrote: It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that most people who do get paid to work on GNOME have been hired exactly because they were part of the community. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. Following my previous statement, I think people get involved first and then get hired to continue working on what they were already working on (or something close). Therefore I don't think that the enormous amount of time and dedication is that difficult to overcome. Of course that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement, and I'm happy that we had such events as the DX hackfests. I think we should have more of them and I'd certainly vote in favour if there were requests for budget to hold them. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. I hope my reply will satisfy you. I'd like to add that I think it's a good thing that people manage to make a living working on our project, and that I actually wish there were more companies hiring them. I don't know how to solve this issue though. -- Alexandre Franke ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Question on community to the candidates.
Hi Sri, Thanks for your questions! It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. Anyone who seriously expects volunteers to put just as much time and dedication into working on GNOME as full time paid employees might be able to do, probably needs to check their privilege... Most people are forced to pay for stuff (e.g. food and rent) by this cruel world, so we probably ought to try and avoid expecting volunteers to contribute to GNOME as though it were a full or (dare I say it) even a part time job, given that many people simply may really want to, but simply not be able to financially afford to do that. A contributor's socio-economic status ought not indirectly exclude them from being valued by the community, in my view. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? I think making a concerted effort to explore a wider variety of income sources with a view to increasing our income significantly, is probably the way forward ;-) An ideal situation, would be one where we are able to offer some financial support towards the important work our volunteers, wherever possible. I also reckon that volunteers are much more likely to stay engaged where they feel meaningfully involved and that their contributions are valued: If we consciously strive to take more members to more events, be receptive to new ideas and feedback, encourage contributors to apply for membership and advertise whenever new opportunities pop up then I suspect this could help us increase, diversify and engage our pool of contributors too. Thanks again, Magdalen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Question on community to the candidates.
It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME than community. I do not question the passion and dedication to those who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community even if they were not paid. If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help increase participation in GNOME? Participation in the core parts of GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you are interested in. If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is not the case? How would you change my mind? I did not bring any data points, so you don't have to either. I'm more interested in giving you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it. sri ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
