On 08/08/13 at 17:23 -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
> Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >Here is a report on the survey of new contributors I initiated a few weeks ago[1].
>
> Thank you Lucas, and thanks to respondents.
>
> >[...]
> >
> >
> >> Q1: Can you (briefly) introduce yourself? What motivated you to
> >> start contributing to Debian? What are you (trying to) contribute
> >> to in Debian?
> >>
> >> Q2: What are your reasons for starting to contribute to Debian *now*? Why
> >> didn't you start before? :)
> >
> >| Those two questions being quite open, it is difficult to draw any statistics
> >| from the answers. However, if I try to draw a typical picture of the new
> >| contributor, he/she is a long time Debian user who started contributing to
> >| "scratch an itch": package something s/he developed, depend on in its day
> >| job, etc. Often, they don't start contributing earlier because everything
> >| looks fine (everything they need is packaged and seems properly maintained).
> >| However, some (a minority) of new contributors are simply willing to give
> >| back, without any (apparent) specific interest in what they are working on.
> >|
> >[...]
> >
> >So, trying to summarize. (everything below is my personal opinion)
> >As Debian, we usually like people who will join our teams and contribute to our
> >usual team duties. But most new contributors are interested in maintaining a
> >specific package (usually not yet in Debian). If they fail at this first step,
> >they are likely to be lost for Debian. Unfortunately, we suck at sponsoring
> >"random" packages. Nice loop...
>
>
> Could you precise the proportions here? How many respondents were
> interested in maintaining a specific package? And how many want to
> maintain a specific package which is not in Debian?
As this was not asked directly, I've re-read through answers and tried
to categorize new contributors.
17/37 give an indication that they were primarly motivated by
contributing to a specific piece of software (something they are
upstream for, rely on in their day job, etc.)
10/37 give an indication that they are primarly motivated by
contributing to Debian, with no pre-defined very-specific area
of contribution
10/37 give no indication in either direction
> And not just for you, but didn't we recently have an analysis of
> contributors collaboration in packaging, with statistics on the
> proportion of team-maintained vs private packages?
http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=751
> >
> >Actionable items:
> >[...]
> >- have a more introductory documentation to BTS usage
>
> ...or just ease ITS contributions.
ITS?
Lucas