Re: 3.18 topics: application revival

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org> wrote:
...
> > 4) A "GNOME apps" hackfest.
> >
> > 5) A "GNOME apps" online sprint - come up with a list of bugs and get
> > designs in place. Advertise for volunteers and have people ready to
> > review bugs.
>
> I have experimented a bit today[1] and I'd like to add a middle ground
> to this, with a kind of distributed small scale hackfests, say we'd
> have a few cities at first, where around 5 persons would meet for a
> day, and each gathering would focus on a single application.
>
> This could get contributors from other modules to give energy to new
> applications, bring new persons to development and give the necessary
> shot to the new (or old) apps.
>
> Of course I'd volunteer for Brussels or Paris (where we have good
> relations with persons at the Mozilla offices).
>
> This can be so low key I could just organize it by myself but we can
> probably get more interest and people if we coordinate and advertise
> this globally at first.

Small hackfests sound great, Fred.

My view is that we should focus on key applications where more
progress/activity is desirable. Leaving aside the question of Empathy,
my priorities would be Music, Notes, Photos and Videos, since these
are basic, essential apps, where it would be nice to see more
development activity. I've spoken to the maintainers of three of these
applications, and they are all enthusiastic about participating in an
effort to encourage contributions.

I think that agreeing on roadmaps for each app would be a really good
first step, since it will help contributors to know what needs work.
That's something that I can try and facilitate; Jakub or myself could
also create some shiny new mockups so people can get a sense of what
we're aiming for.

Once we have roadmaps, I'm thinking that an online sprint might be the
best way to move forward (this could possibly be combined with
hackfests, either at the same time or later). New contributors might
not be able to attend a hackfest, but could participate in an online
event.

I think that it would be really good to get the Engagement Team
involved in helping to promote these initiatives, so that we reach a
wide audience.

Allan