[Scooby] Re: [General] Scooby project landing page

[Mikeal Rogers]

Something different in scooby 0.1 than any other product 0.1 is that  
it is using relatively new technology which is currently the talk of  
town in silicon valley, AJAX.

Matt has stressed to me a few times the lack of open source  
javascript libraries and the simple tasks which he has written from  
scratch because of a lack of previous development in the area. To top  
it all off the AJAX/Web2.0 development crowd is a very blogging heavy  
crowd that checks out anything new and cool when it's released. I  
think that scooby 0.1 _will_ get looked at by potential developers  
and _will_ have some contributions before the next release even if we  
do our damnedest to not promote the release or reduce the barrier to  
entry.

We need to think about this influx of people touching the product  
before release, but _I personally_ think that this crowd is going to  
care less about a polished page and more about having decent  
documentation and a simple way that they can contribute to the  
project. The focus of this and other threads seems to have been more  
about polishing and reducing the barrier for end users and less about  
the amount of content and policy we have that will be useful for the  
people who are probably going to show up.

What we can't do: Create our own Mozilla.org before 0.1

What we can do: Use the extra time that we have, which is very  
little, to beef up our documentation and determine a process for our  
community to participate in the product.

Regardless of what we intended the release to be, I think we are  
going to get more web 2.0 junkies looking at this and wanting to  
tinker with it than previously thought.

-Mikeal

On Feb 14, 2006, at 2:09 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> Lisa,
>
> I think that's a totally valid position to take. But I'm not sure  
> that was the shared understanding when we agreed to a Feb 14th  
> release date.
>
> So if attracting volunteers is the no. 1 reason for 0.1, that would  
> be a significant change in policy that has consequences for both  
> the content of the landing page as well as how it's laid out and  
> presented. It may have consequences for general product strategy  
> and planning. ie. What we decided to get done for 0.1, how much  
> time we allotted *ahead of time* for things such as the landing page.
>
> 1. What kind of developers do we want? Are we ready to deal with?
> 2. To contribute in what ways?
>
> ie. If someone wrote up a month view or mini-calendar, do we just  
> stick that in, run with it and iterate accordingly? Or do we need  
> to massage it into a coherent design first? Both are perfectly  
> valid approaches. We probably wouldn't do the former for Chandler,  
> but I'm not sure which one is appropriate for Scooby.
>
> 4. How much do we expect contributors to socialize their ideas and  
> get buy-in on the Scooby list? How do we get contributors up to  
> speed on our internal processes for doing that?
>
> Without a clear 3 paragraph description of higher level Scooby  
> product strategy and product vision will we squander early  
> developer interest? (That sort of happened with Chandler.)
>
> + Will Scooby be a personal use calendar (a la Yahoo calendar)
> + Will Scooby be a social calendar (a la EVDB)
> + Will Scooby be a "calendar" canvas that can display any time- 
> based data (a la Google Maps)
>
> If all of the above? What are their relative priorities?
>
> We don't need to answer all these questions before 0.1, but a  
> public discussion exploring various scenarios and possible  
> directions would have been in order.
>
> Mimi
>
> ====
>
> A minor point: I agree that that the barrier to entry for  
> contributing to Scooby is lower than it is for Chandler, but by the  
> same token, there are also a lot more projects to contribute to.
>
> In the end, my assumption would be that open source communities  
> abide by the same laws of human nature that all organizations do.
>
> + I want to join a club because it's really important (ie. the  
> Supreme Court OR A piece of software that lots of people use and  
> love).
> + I want to join a club because it's really exclusive (ie. the  
> Supreme Court, going to the Olympics)
>
> Very few people join up and stick around just because they can.
>
> Low barriers to entry are important because you want to make it  
> easy for people to make contact and you don't want artificial  
> barriers getting in the way of attracting potentially valuable  
> contributors (ie. Priscilla's points about how things like bugzilla  
> make it harder for designers to participate in open source projects.)
>
> However, unless there's a compelling reason to stay (ie. users or a  
> clear vision), people generally tend not to stick around.
>
> But of course, I would defer to Ted on any of this.
>
> Mimi
>
>
> On Feb 14, 2006, at 12:41 PM, Lisa Dusseault wrote:
>
>>
>> On Feb 14, 2006, at 11:58 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> When 0.1's release date was reset to Feb 14, we all agreed that  
>>> it was:
>>> + Primarily for internal validation of release process for Scooby
>>> + While we're at it, we should make cool new AJAX things we're  
>>> doing available to people
>>> + We always want to be attracting developer interest, but it's  
>>> not the raison d'etre of the release
>>
>> I put "attracting volunteers" at the top of the list, myself, for  
>> motivating the release.  I have no serious worries about  
>> validating a release process that worked fine for Chandler and  
>> Cosmo many times.   I have no problems with making Scooby  
>> technology available to people early but frankly my reason for  
>> doing so is self-interest more than altruism as I think that will  
>> spark more contributions :)   We have one code contribution to  
>> Scooby already (some JavaScript date util stuff) and I'd like to  
>> see more.
>>
>>>
>>> (The mantra with Chandler has always been, you'll get developers  
>>> when you get users.)
>>
>> This seems not to be the case with Scooby.  The barrier to entry  
>> to becoming a Scooby developer may be much lower than becoming a  
>> Chandler contributor because it's a smaller system built in a more  
>> conventional way.  You might also consider the existing  
>> contributor to be a "user" as he downloaded the .js files for use  
>> in his own project.
>>
>>>
>>> I guess a slightly different angle on this is: When we look back  
>>> on the 0.1 release to evaluate whether it was a success, a draw  
>>> or a failure, how will we evaluate the release?
>>
>> If we get any rise in contributions.
>>
>>>
>>> If the QA process breaks down OR no one can download Scooby OR  
>>> the demo-instance craps out, but 3 new developers wanted to join  
>>> up on the project because they're psyched out our logo, would we  
>>> have met our objectives? (It's unlikely that the latter would  
>>> happen if the former did happen ;o)
>>
>> I'd say yes.
>>
>>>
>>> Now given those goals and their relative priorities, how does a  
>>> nicely organized text-based page (html or wiki) fail to  
>>> communicate these things?
>>
>> Don't have an answer to that one :)
>>
>>>
>>> Mimi
>>
>> Lisa
>
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