Re: getting more participation for development

On Thursday 23 June 2005 04:54, you wrote:
> The tools our group is developing or maintaining are immensely
> popular, yet we have been for a while, and remain, a very small
> group.

Isn't the service - rather than the software - the really popular thing?

> On another side of the equation, I wonder why we don't have more
> participants helping with the development. On the user/support side,
> I think www-validator is a real success, lots of good people acting
> as experts, watchdogs, or providing patient help to the lost users...
> It's a lot of time and not a grateful commitment, yet it works. How
> could we do the same for the code? Change of infrastructure? Methods?

Possibly the development process is not as public/high profile as it could
 be?

In my capacity as an Apache hack, I've just got involved in the Google
"Summer of Code", and may be mentoring students over the summer.
Why didn't validator get involved in that?  Perhaps because the whole
development process is too quiet and low-key?

I do have a problem with w-v myself.  I feel my own ideas in this project
haven't really gone anywhere (for example, Xerces-based XML validation
has languished on qa-dev for over three years, and XMLMessages are not
being used).  My actual (accepted) contributions have been pretty trivial.

That's in sharp contrast to Apache, where my contributions have been
well-received.

> I know that many of you are involved in other open source projects,
> what made you choose them rather than others?

Apache, because I use it, and want it to do more than it already does.

And because, unlike QA or Accessibility, apache-hacking is something
people seem prepared to pay me for.  Though I didn't know that until
I'd established a name as an apache hack!

> Are there tools or
> ideas there (I'm thinking sourceforge, but not only) that we could,
> should have here? If you had one thing to change in the way the qa-
> dev group is working, what would it be?

I find sourceforge painful to use.

> The latter question is not purely rethorical... There may be
> "administrative" changes coming soon to QA, that can be used as a
> good time to make changes in how we deal with the projects.
>
> Looking forwards to your thoughts.

--
Nick Kew

Received on Friday, 24 June 2005 13:09:27 UTC