Hello folks!
We’ve been recently looking to reduce the learning gradient that new folks need to hike up when they look to contribute to Fedora. Users looking to give back to the community is amazing. I feel we need to go out and give them as much help as we can. The importance here is that most of them will be new to the workflows, SIGS, teams and processes that Fedora community uses. Quite a few of them will be new to Linux even. For these novices, learning all that is required to become contributors is a daunting task. However, what is important is that all of them have the *potential* to make awesome contributors!
At the moment, this is how folks go about it:
1. Look at the join-fedora page[1]
2. Select what they want to do, or randomly pick one that looks familiar
3. Join the various mailing lists
4. Ask how they can help
5. Start working, and learn while they work
Even though this works, there are a few issues here IMO:
1. Quite a few folks aren’t sure what they want to do. The join fedora page is confusing for them at times. They don’t know first hand what each role is about, so they aren’t sure if they should join up SIG A or SIG B.
2. The various mailing lists: devel, mktg, infra are work oriented. While we do guide newcomers that ask for help on the lists, these newcomers are usually scared to ask questions. They feel they’ll make fools of themselves if they ask simple questions in front of established contributors.
Basically, the working mailing lists aren’t exactly the best environment for new comers. They are task oriented. They aren’t dedicated to aiding new comers. We also don’t want lots of introductions etc. on the work mailing lists either. We want them to be dedicated to *work*.
I therefore suggest setting up communication channels dedicated to aid newcomers. I’ve already run into a “Welcome SIG”[2] initiative. The “welcome SIG” was intended to be more broad. It was intended for users too. If we set up “welcome SIG”, I’m afraid it’ll turn into another troubleshooting channel. We already have #fedora, the users mailing list[3], askfedora[3] for troubleshooting. I’d like to set up a channel dedicated to prospective contributors: something like a “Join Fedora SIG”(proposal on the wiki here[4]). Gnome already has something on these lines: the Gnome Love[5] project. It works. I’m on the mailing list. People ask for help, they get their guidance. Slowly, they turn into contributors. I’d like to again stress that the current mailing lists, while already present and open to the public are not *dedicated* to this purpose of guiding newbies. I suggest:
1. #fedora-join on Freenode
2. fedora-join mailing list
The goals of these are:
1. Set up a communication channel between the existing contributors and prospective contributors. Speaking to current team members is always encouraging. We could even set up a system to send “easyfix” tasks to this mailing list giving folks a chance to work on them and learn in the process.
2. Guide/aid prospective contributors to turn into solid contributors. Rather than just pointing them to join.fp.o, talk to them, see what issues they face, help them decide where they want to get started.
3. Via these channels, form better mentor-mentee relationships. Here, I mean “mentor” in the real sense of the word. Rahul, for instance, brought me into Fedora almost 6 years back via a font packaging IRC work shop. He’s still my mentor and I still email him when I get stuck in a situation. Such relationships improve the community, both work wise and fun wise.
4. Give prospective contributors a communication channel to converse amongst themselves. This is very important. Take the gsoc mailing list for instance. It is set up specifically so that the candidates can talk to each other. Since they’re all in the same boat, they feel more comfortable discussing certain issues amongst themselves. They’ll also be aware of what different people are upto which will give them a better idea of what they can do.
I’m looking to set up this channel. Whatever I’ve written above is mostly what *my* neurons could think up. I initially thought that extending the classroom SIG to also function as the Join Fedora SIG would work, but Kevin suggested we keep them separate. (The function of the classroom SIG is for the community to teach each other). Basically, I’d like to look for potential, not polish. We can help them gain the polish that established contributors have.
What are your views on this folks? Here, I’d request folks to follow “plussing”: please criticize this as much as you want, find issues, but only if you have a “plus” to give as a solution. (I ran into it in a book I recently read. I think it’s a great way to go. No harm giving it a try 🙂 )
Steps:
1. File ticket at infra to set up fedora-join mailing list
2. Set up IRC channel #fedora-join
3. File ticket with websites SIG to make tiny changes to join.fp.o to list Fedora-Join IRC and mailing list channels.
4. Get started!
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everybody wants to contribute but fedora people never listen to the community…there is a demand of LTS but they are not listening
There is a reason behind Fedora not having an LTS, which I personally agree with. We move fairly quickly on to the newest available software which means a lot of changes. We have a tough time testing each release with so many changes. I wouldn’t want the extra burden of maintaining an LTS along with that.
That being said, if you really want one, you should start one. Fedora is completely Free and Open source. Even the infra etc. bits are completely open. You can start a Fedora based LTS release on your own.
Fedora is not “demand driven”, it is “community driven”. There is a difference. Sure, we do make changes to try and make Fedora better and more user friendly, but there is a limit to which we can stretch the community and it’s resources. 🙂
that is the exact reason people are fleeing from fedora …and adopting mint or ubuntu…
What is the “exact reason” you’re referring to?
the reason is that the fedora “commuity” makes fedora only for the “community” ….general users are left at the mercy of community …..this is the second time that a fedora dev has said ” if you really want one, you should start one” if i would have been a programmer i would not be using fedora….but sadly i am not ….so all the non eng. guys are using ubuntu or mint who atleast listen to the users…moreover users sometimes also contribute…like bug report filing…
Consider I maintain a package for you, but I don’t use it myself. The chances of me neglecting the package are very high: Let’s say you report a bug. I don’t use the package, how do I reproduce the bug to confirm it? A lot of us don’t mind maintaining smaller packages at users’ requests. We have a wishlist set up here that we encourage users to add to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_maintainers_wishlist. We package a lot of stuff from here to make it available to our users. However, you need to understand the enormous effort that goes into maintaining an entire desktop environment, in this case MATE. It isn’t a tiny piece of software. It’s a bunch of software that must be configured to work properly together. All it’s components must be built properly, they must be updated properly. There’s a lot of work that goes into package maintaining that users aren’t aware of. It isn’t an automatic process, and at times, it isn’t a simple process either. You appear to be in luck, and MATE packaging has begun: it should be available in Fedora 18. This came about because there was demand for the package, and because a fedora developer (Dan) would like to use MATE + has the time to maintain it properly. So, we do listen to our users. If you were active in the community, you’d see the number of changes that are being made to provide users with a better experience. However, if you want something to happen overnight, you’re clearly on the wrong planet 🙂
Now, look at this tracker bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=840149. Packaging has just begun, and it’s already almost 20 packages. Do you see that any one developer cannot take this workload if he/she isn’t using the package personally?
I never comment on other linux distros. I’m sorry, but it isn’t quite my domain to do that. We always encourage users to contribute and bug filing is a great way if you take the trouble of following the bug up.