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

[Ted Leung]

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.
My understanding was also that 0.1 was an "attract developers 
release".   Otherwise why would you do a release for something that 
didn't work for users?    As Mikael pointed out in his reply, there is 
reason to believe that some of the core components in Scooby will be of 
interest to developers.    Making that componentry available a bit more 
publically is a good way to attract participation.
>
> 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?
I certainly think that we could expect to see bug fixes against the 
component level code, and perhaps someone would so something more 
ambitious, such as a month view or mini-calendar.
>
> 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?
I expect us to have a process where both code and design contributors 
continue to collaborate on the direction of the project.   If we 
actually get people participating in a productive way, that would be a 
push for us to bring our internal processes up to speed at working with 
people outside of OSAF.   People would of course be free to fork our 
code and go do whatever they want, but it is really in everybody's 
interest for a community to grow up around Scooby.
>
> 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.)
Well, I think that we are in a different place between Scooby and 
Chandler, and I also think that we can work out a strategy and vision if 
necessary (although I don't believe it is a prerequisite for 0.1).
>
> + 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?
One thing I'll observe is that it is possible for OSAF to maintain its 
own priorities while incorporating work done by people outside of 
OSAF.   Many of the Apache projects have large numbers of committers 
from corporations.  Those corporations have their own priorities for 
those people to work on.   It has been a part of Apache's success that 
we have a community where the corporations (often more than one) and 
"volunteers" are able to collaborate effectively.   I think that we at 
OSAF can do the same (with OSAF staff in the role of a corporation).
>
> 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.
I agree that this sort of discussion would have helped.   I'm a bit 
concerned that we're only finding out about a mismatch of expectations 
at this late date.
>
> 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)
Some people look at something and can see "the angel in the marble" and 
are motivated to help sculpt the marble until the angel remains.   This 
is the scratch your own itch thing, which is another motivation aside 
from reputation based motivations you list above.
>
> 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.
If people feel that they are able to make a contribution, are respected, 
and are having fun, they will get involved and stick around. 

We have a lot of work to do on all the projects at OSAF, and I think 
that there are plenty of places where new folks could come in and make 
lots of positive contributions.

Ted