Re: Question on community to the candidates.

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> It is my impression (and I state impression because I am providing no
> data) that GNOME has more reliance on people paid to work on GNOME
> than community.  I do not question the passion and dedication to those
> who are paid on GNOME, I know that they would do it as a community
> even if they were not paid.
>
> If you agree with my impression, what actions do you think would help
> increase participation in GNOME?  Participation in the core parts of
> GNOME is not trivial, and requires an enormous amount of time and
> dedication to get to become familiar with the huge codebase that we
> have, as well as gain the trust of the maintainer of the module you
> are interested in.
>
> If you disagree with my impression, what makes you believe that it is
> not the case? How would you change my mind?  I did not bring any data
> points, so you don't have to either.  I'm more interested in giving
> you a biased opinion and I want to know how you would react to it.
...

Personally, I do see new contributors getting involved, so I'm wary of
making judgments about declining participation. However, encouraging
participation is vital whatever the situation, and this is something
that I would like the Board to focus on, if it is able.

Encouraging participation is a big, complex question, which touches on
pretty much everything we do as a project, so it is not something that
the Board can address on its own. However, there are areas of Board
work that are relevant, and things that the Board could do to help...

The Engagement Team is key to enabling participation, since
advertising the great things happening in the GNOME project is an
important part of attracting contributors. So, the Board needs to
ensure that the Engagement Team is doing well. This is traditionally a
responsibility of the ED, so this is another reason to make sure that
the hiring process moves ahead. Once hired, we will also need to make
sure that the ED focuses on the Engagement Team, and if they aren't
able to, or we aren't able to hire an ED in a timely fashion, we
should think about other measures.

The other thing the Board should do is support any community
initiatives in this area. Suggesting hackfests and providing funds is
an obvious possibility here (we should definitely make sure that the
Developer Experience Hackfests continue to be a regular event). It
will be vital for the Board to have an awareness of what is happening
in the project at large for this to happen, and I think that I can
help with that.

Finally, as I mentioned in one of my previous emails, I would really
like the Board to be more proactive, and this is a good example of a
strategic area where it could provide leadership and energy. For
example, if we identify a particular area that is lacking or blocking
(such as development tools or documentation), the Board could
coordinate to ensure that the gap is plugged, or it could even invest
funds or do fundraising to help.

Allan