Re: Questions

[Glynn Foster <Glynn Foster Sun COM>]

Hey,

Robert Staudinger wrote:
> The GNOME family is becoming bigger and bigger, with regard to
> volunteers just as with regard to corporate interest. A healthy
> balance between the not always converging interests of those two parts
> of the community is important.
> 
> (i) Concerns can be heard throughout the community every now and then,
> that the increasing corporate interest and investment makes it harder
> and harder to contribute code for volunteers.
> Q: What is your feeling about that?

I love it actually. Though I have an obvious Sun bias, I *love* the fact that
Sun is actively involved in the project. I witness most of the team here trying
to continually do the best for the community and work with others - it doesn't
always happen the right way, but we're trying.

I also love the fact that the other companies in the Advisory board are
involved. They each have important things to contribute to the project - it also
has the added advantage of giving us some very real channels to push our
software through.

> (ii) Are you interested in working on making it easier for people
> willing to contribute code?

Yes, absolutely. Low barrier to entry is very important. I'm really enjoying
watching the progress the web team are making to improve some of those barriers.

> (iii) What measures will you conduct to make contribution of code
> easier for volunteers. (E.g. it can be rather frustrating having an
> unreviewed patch in bugzilla for months.)

People contribute what they can, when they can. However, it's entirely up to
them to have the conscience of knowing when they need to ask for help
maintaining a component. Often enough, it's actually a mixture of patience and
persistence from the reporter - if they see an obvious breakdown, maybe they can
step up to the plate by showing a responsibility to get the component in order.

> (iv) The GNOME Advisory has been formed to handle communication
> between partys with commercial interest and the GNOME project.
> Q: Do you think that a similar institution should be formed to handle
> community feedback in an organised manner or will community
> contributors have to communicate back using mailing lists and IRC as
> it always was?

I think we're always finding new ways to communicate and get feedback from our
users. I don't believe we need to radically change the approach we've had over
the last 9 years - we've had a successful string of releases, and we're making
new ground on many different fronts.

At the end of the day, the people who write the code have the right to dictate
the direction of GNOME. It's always been that way, though I would obviously hope
and encourage that they would have listened to feedback from the wider community
for user requirements or suchlike.


Glynn