Continuous Community Integration - FISL14

LibreOffice has seen a tremendous growth since it was started 2 1/2 years ago, especially in the number of unaffiliated volunteer contributors. This growth came with a constant challenge to (re-)evaluate the communication and coordination means of the project. This talk gives an insight in how coordination in such a massive and distributed project works, but also tries to give some cautious hints what parts of that might apply to smaller projects.
video of presentation at:
http://hemingway.softwarelivre.org/fisl14/high/40t/sala40t-high-201307061400.ogg

Transcript

1. 1 LibreOffice: Continuous Community Integration Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michaelsen@canonical.com bjoern.michaelsen@documentfoundation.org
2. 2 liberating productivity Agenda Communication Channels: The right tool for the job EasyHacks Tools: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Processes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Growing Pains Or: The times are a-changin Conclusions
3. 3 Communication Channels: The right tool for the job I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. – Linus Torvalds, 1991 Start with a mailing list and essential tools: Bugzilla DSCM IRC, wiki, voice conferences, blogs and a planet => later Everything else is optional for the ecosystem: Forums, askbot, Social Media
4. 4 Facetime and Talk Time
5. 5 Facetime and Talk Time: Triage Contest
6. 6 Social Media: Pump them! Social Media is a good marketing outlet … … but you dont own them.
7. 7 Social Media: Pump them!
8. 8 core developers Community Onion: Push communication outwards Core developers Code and QA contributors Contributors Consumers
9. 9 Easy Hacks
10. 10 Easy Hacks: … and where we are now.
11. 11 Easy Hacks: Enabling Others Push the contribution sphere “outwards” Avoid responsibility being push “inwards” (c) CC Jeff Attaway http://www.flickr.com/photos/attawayjl/4043247054/sizes/o/in/photolist-7ahGu7-7cjyo-9RoPNW-7TmycV-7M4Vfb-5Aa1XX-3PqdFH-6tXwn-VzBNj-5fkje-qVoVq-9RoG3Y-2KV18C-a1sifE-exSG8R-exVPnU-exSHB8-exVVTA-exVU99-exSMAV-exVRSA-exVS8s-exVPqy-exSR5c-exSS
12. 12 OpenHatch
13. 13 Example Bugzilla: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
14. 14 Example Bugzilla: The Good Keeps track of bugs Known by almost all the software world in trained hands, it can provide revelant statistics
15. 15 Example Bugzilla: The Bad
16. 16 Example Bugzilla: The Ugly no good l10n Not known in the general public Not intuitive in its vocabulary
17. 17 Example Bugzilla: The Not So Ugly
18. 18 Example Gerrit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
19. 19 Gerrit: The Good Do I need to get a permission to get involved? Do I need to get an account to get involved? Do I need to pass some tests for others to let me modify the source? Do I need to fumble around with manually copy pasting patches? No. Transparency: Allows lurking. Enables a smooth transition to evolve from a drive-by contributor to a reviewer and core developer Buildbot gives a powerful tools into the hands of new contributors
20. 20 Gerrit: The Bad Yet another tool? Isnt git already obscure enough?
21. 21 Gerrit: The Ugly Mechanical Impersonal Interacting with a machine Another layer of indirection
22. 22 Gerrit: The Ugly From Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu>: Lionel Elie Mamane has uploaded a new change for review. Change subject: fdo#43556 round pos&dim of report controls & sections to nearest 10^-4m ...................................................................... fdo#43556 round pos&dim of report controls & sections to nearest 10^-4m Change-Id: I3fa331d246160935f4feed21de69f9ec0c2e9994 --- M reportdesign/source/ui/inspection/GeometryHandler.cxx 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) git pull ssh://gerrit.libreoffice.org:29418/core refs/changes/57/257/1 --
23. 23 Gerrit: The Not so Ugly Hi, I have submitted a patch for review: https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/4691 To pull it, you can do: git pull ssh://gerrit.libreoffice.org:29418/translations refs/changes/91/4691/1 fdo#66007 - spurious & causing entity warning errors was already fixed for mn in ad5ed8525c1f41a9ee8dd9183ac7f6ae045625f7 Change-Id: I122816833b315cc62b856a461cb3f3671dd68042 --- M source/sa-IN/sysui/desktop/share.po 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/source/sa-IN/sysui/desktop/share.po b/source/sa-IN/sysui/desktop/share.po ... patch follows ...
24. 24 Gerrit: The Not so Ugly TODO: DIGEST
25. 25 Processes: The Good It might give shy new contributors a starting point on “how things are done”. They prevent contributor expectations to divert too much. As with code style conventions: Its not so much important what is in them as long as you have some.
26. 26 Processes: The Bad Everyone hates bureaucracy. In Europe (EU) a banana is not a banana unless its at least 14cm long and 27mm in diameter. Also they need to come in packs of four or more.
27. 27 Processes: The Ugly Always prefer direct interaction! Avoid layers of indirection. Use bureaucracy only as fallback/measure of last resort.
28. 28 Growing Pains: Heirarchy Avoid fancy titles status driven directly from recent contributions Encourage mobility Doers are deciders
29. 29 Growing Pains: Invisible Local Costums “In our village we do things in one specific way only ...” “... but of course, we never wrote down how.”
30. 30 Growing Pains: Adapt Should LibreOffice Math be an application of its own? version numbering scheme config.h vs. -DHAVE_FOO Easier or Harder to file Bugs? (c) CC Currybet http://www.flickr.com/photos/currybet/37733364/sizes/l/in/photolist-4koPf-4koZi-4koRC-4koWk-4koXJ-4koTJ-8GEqN3-bs4Whu-5qwU7s-xJu8g-xJu1J-xJtRU-xJucW-63wnYx-7Ywi84-7Ywjp4-8znxh6-52yjv6-acokAy-5UoAYA-cbfmC9-6QJg1N-4nHww4-eGvpZL/
31. 31 Growing Pains: Be aware of the unknowns! ... hear the fleas coughing … – german proverb Imagine for each newcomer reporting trouble to you, there are 10 didnt find you and 100 that didnt bother to report.
32. 32 Conclusions Do the Right Thing. Put yourself in the position of a new contributor regularly. And again. And again.
33. 33 Contact me Sweetshark on #libreoffice-dev/#libreoffice-qa on freenode Sweetshark1 on twitter