[TOS] The "How to contribute to FOSS" Document is Mostly Finished

[Dave Neary]

Hi Kenneth,

Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
> In my experience, and from observation I
> find that sustained long term contributors to a project almost
> invariably come from people who start out as users of the project/app.

<snip>

I agree with your characterisation of things for "volunteer" (for lack
of a better word) developers.

However, there is a large & growing number of free software developers
who do not discover free software projects like this, and that is
professional software developers. We should also (I would say
*especially*, since I'm not too worried about the people who organically
discover projects) cater to them.

The things which we should be educating people about are:
For managers/executives:
 * Before deciding to build on a free software component, how do you
evaluate the health of the community?
 * The cost/benefit analysis of maintaining a delta in the case of:
  1. Branching off stable (read: old) versions of software & fixing it
to suit your needs
  2. Branching off the latest version of the software & fixing it to
suit your needs
  3. Working in the community to have your needs addressed in the
upstream software

For developers:
 * How to get over a fear of mailing lists (the number of professional
developers I know who are not comfortable with written English is
frightening - and that includes native speakers!)
 * OK so I have to work on this stuff... how do I get patches upstream?
 * People in glasshouses... How to develop a feature in the open without
having design by committee/bikeshed discussions/stop energy.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary at gnome.org