Re: Projectleader meeting Erkelenz

[Knut Yrvin <knuty@skolelinux.no>]

Fredag 17 februar 2006 14:35, skrev Morten Werner Olsen:
> I'm kind of miss the main goal about this new member process. Is it
> an offer for new developers wanting to help out, or do you want
> _every_ new developer joining us to go through this process?

My perception of this was to help new members to get into the project. 
Almost as we do for translators with a ~20 pages guide to setup the 
primary tools, how to use kbabel to translate, and how to commit 
changes. There is also links to the online step-by-steb documentation 
for different tasks. For developers that could be a 15-20 pages guide 
with exact description of some primary activities on how to start. 

This guide should cover how to: 

- get an account
- find and report a bug
- fix the bug, commit the fix to the svn
- make a Debian package with the fix
- commit the changes to the CD
- test the fix
- close the bug, if it works

I people want to excel as an Debian developer, we should explain how 
that is done in the last chapter of the beginner guide. 

Why I don't want to make the beginner guide mandatory is because 
different people have different needs. We should encourage developers 
to get excel to the Debian level, but we should also keep the threshold 
to be a developer as lo as possible, just to encourage people to learn 
and share new knowledge. If we make the level to high, we could make 
good contributors scared, and miss out people that really do good work. 

We have some of the same experiences when translating software. We have 
some people that translate a lot, but don't maintain the translations 
to the central repository. That's done by one or two translators, as we 
do with Debian installer, KDE or GNOME. The rest of the translators 
translate, and it's around 15-20 and sometimes more that commits on 
regular basis. It would be unfortunate to miss out work from 10 people 
that will do a grate job, if we make the demands to high. My experience 
is that people are interested in doing a good job, and we should 
encourage good practice, and the new beginners guide should help with 
that. 

There are probably other opinions on this, but this is my perception :-)

- Knut Yrvin