Re: Survey of new contributors -- results
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?
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?
Actionable items:
[...]
- have a more introductory documentation to BTS usage
...or just ease ITS contributions.
[...]
--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com
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