How involve more developers?

Community
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Sorry @Jim what do you mean exactly with demystifyng?

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By demystify, I mean make it accessible, with documentation, with howtos, with exemples


With an adequate documentation, communication, there a way to make things easier
 and attract more developers.

Edit: And there’s different “levels” of documentation.

  • Technical references
  • User Manual
  • FAQ
  • Quick Sheet

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23

Thanks @Jim

Now I understand what you mean and I agree.

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What I think would be the ultimate form of community devvers: Members with little or no coding skills will be mentored by experienced devvers. First getting simple tasks with pointers how to solve them and reviewed by those mentors. Then interested members can grow into the world of coding.

Besides getting developers from the own community we should just ‘spread the word’ that we are having the most awesome community in the opensource world and can use any experienced developers, especially people who know perl.

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Perl, PHP, JS and a bit of python :slight_smile:

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And my all time favorite, if you don’t know it but want to learn it and figure it out, googling is your friend :smile:

I certainly would love to be part of the netherserver development community. Current hurdle is learning the e-smith layer, that will take time to understand and build something to make practical. That and the lack of hardware to install NS and mess with :smile:

Perhaps, may I suggest; that mini-HowTo’s are created by some developers as examples. A widget, or graphical image to “brand” your NS server. A step by step HowTo to write something that that allows a user to maybe upload an image for their profile or someone else’s profile. Just a suggestion.

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IMHO, the problem is not the e-smith database/template layers, it is quite easy to understand. Ok some examples can come to demonstrate how build a ‘foreach’ function for extracting values from a ‘type’ value in a specific database


for example

 foreach my $cronName ($cdb->get_all_by_prop('type', 'cron')) { }

or how extract a value of a property in a key

for example

my $status = $cronName->prop('status')|| '';
next unless $status eq 'enabled';

my $name    = $cronName->key;
my $minute  = $cronName->prop('Minute')|| '0';
my $hour    = $cronName->prop('Hour')|| '0';

In fact the huge document work to do is Nethgui, the framework which display the server-manager. If you want to display a simply inputbox
I believe all is quite there, but when you want to do a table, with some nice and checking box, radio button, user box selection etc, etc, etc
It is not the same
and you must go to read the code of other modules.

Since there is a wiki, in few weeks we can start on there
How I do to document, when I discover something, I write there to remember
quite simple and other will learn with me.

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28

You got the point, looking for skilled devs out there isn’t easy, we have to help our learner friends right here and right now
From my point of view, that’s one of community priorities. :checkered_flag:

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29

BRAVO!

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I would try answer to the invitation concerning Nethforge for the module I did recently or in the past
One time more I would love to write in a better English
At the end don’t forget I’m not a bad guy, even if the dark side is attracting me.

The problem is not really to attract new developers, they will come with the light and the noise generated by the project, it is to create a sustainable development way for them
why they will stay here to create and maintain rpms.

If I look behind my little experience of contribs.org, we saw people who have done a lot of code, who have pushed the project really far, and now
you can find some of them answering an email, others don’t want to listen any more about contribs, and some are RIP :frowning:

It is a really private question why you stop to work in a free software project, and the answer may change with each guy
I totally respect their point of view, but I have my little idea.

They do not reach a sustainable way for the software development.

One common point for those who worked the longer time/are still active in the SME Server project, it is simply for the ‘money’

  • They work for a company and the development was needed for their customers and after released in GPL.
  • They funded their own company relative to sme server, providing services and software (dungog.net)

Concerning my involvement in the SME Server project, I provide rpms, code fixes, documentations, ideas, forum supports, freely besides to my day work and my family. All of this is used by people who play with SME at home, at work, earning money with something I gave. Everybody is happy and satisfied.

I’m happy but not satisfied.

I would like to share a bit about nethserver-crontabmanager, since it is asked to push it to nethforge. This software needs around 30/40 hours of development and tests for a first shoot, and probably many more for NFR and enhancements. I don’t know what can be the value in money, it depends where you live on the earth, but the standard measure of one week of work is the same everywhere :smile:

I can push this rpm, and others to nethforge, I don’t mind, as proof of my willingness, the sources are on github, but I’m more concerned to find a way that will let to the developers, the motivation to find time and get creativity in the future. If I speak about money, and I really don’t like this word, it is because my ‘hobby’ needs it, the server at home that I use to develop and test, the server online that I have to pay each month, the laptop
etc
etc

How find a sustainable way, why continue to develop freely

  • the rpm factory is a showroom to be hired by nethesis
  • well known developer can be paid to develop a specific module for a company
  • a company can sponsor the cost involved to your creation (hardware, server, beers)
  • the developer may ask about donations to users, like remi collet does
  • the developer can create his own repository and ask money for updates, it was the dungog model
  • a market can be done, integrated to nethforge, this is the ClearOS model.
  • 
 I’m listening you

I hope that you have understood that I’m not speaking only for myself, I’m just trying to speak loudly to find the code engine which doesn’t stop.

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31

I couldn’t agree more! :smiley:

I propose a simple donation system to support at least external contributors and hosting for mirrors (and maybe all community stuff like wiki, official site, etc).
I know others have better ideas than mine, so stay tuned! :wink:

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What’s about how to redistribute donations equally and/or by technical requirements (services, hardware, software ecc.)?

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@stephdl, I took my time to try to answer, but I still don’t have a clear idea. We need to work on a good environment on a step by step basis.

I find myself in a difficult position, because I’m a both a contributor to open source projects and a stakeholder in nethesis. I’ll try to share some ideas, to foster discussion, but I think that this kind of problems are better tackled in front of a beer. :smile:

I see the nethforge repo as a kind of “certified quality” storage, i.e. packages coming from the forge have been checked by core developers and considered of high quality.
If someone has access to the forge, it means he demonstrated ability over time.
Before entering the forge, packages could live in personal repos, we could build a central store, where it’s clear how polished a packages is, who is supporting it, etc.
Also, packages can move from the forge to the os (i.e. become “official”).

We could offer a way to give the developer feedback on forge packages, we could extend the Software center.

I’d prefer that these features would be modeled by the community, leaving to nethesis only the implementation burden, i.e. we (the community) decide how things should work and then ask for help to some core developers to implement (I hope to have some power on them). :grin:

Talking about money (it’s not a taboo), I’d like to hear more voices. Things should not go around money, but who makes money could share a slice.

nethesis is making money and is open to the idea of sharing.
My idea is to give kind of a token to packages promoted to core (promotion will be a community decision).
nethesis business model relies on customization, it could be shared easily, maybe through something like a market where who is looking for a feature can find a developer.

I’ll be happy to hear more opinions or critics.

Meanwhile, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

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34

Ehi @stephdl sorry for my late response but I took my time to clear my head.

Given that:

  • Nethesis doesn’t wish to receive nor accept donations
  • Every donation should be redirected to the NethServer project
  • We have to ensure maximum transparency in money transactions
  • Creating a foundation to receive and manage money is not an easy thing to do and likely it doesn’t worth at the moment.

There are two practical ways we can go at the same time:

  1. Reward developers funding features to implement
  2. Set up a simple donation system

Reward developers

www.bountysource.com could be a good proposal: straightforward, transparent, integrated with the issue tracker

How does Bountysource work? Users fund bounties on open issues or feature requests they want to see addressed.
Developers create solutions which close the issue and claim the bounty on Bountysource. Backers can accept or reject the claim If accepted, Bountysource pays the bounty to the developer. Easy, doesn’t it?
In this case, community members or companies interested might act as bakers.

Check the project FAQs and some examples:


Donations

We should set up a simple donation system through which people can support the project.
That’s a simple proposal, but we can find other ways:

Then, we can redistribute such pool of money equally and/or by technical requirements: services, hardware, software, mirrors, merchandising, community initiatives. Or even simply supporting issues on bountysource itself.

We have to decide who can manage this pool, for instance, a group of chosen and trusted people.

What do you think? @Ctek @islipfd19 @robb @sitz @Ctek @Nas @dz00te

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35

Hi Alessio,
I like the idea of bounty for features! This system is not new and it works well in other communities. Plus it brings value to the NS in my opinion
I have some questions :slight_smile: and hope that each can chip in

  • How can we make a test-phase?
  • What features can qualify and how ?
  • Will be a fixed amount per feature or some features will have more weight? (who/how the weight of the bounty will be calculated) ?
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The amount will be based on the difficulty of the tasks.
Anybody will be free to create a bounty with any amount.

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Potentially, you can claim a bounty on every features/issue

We need to open them on github because currently Redmine isn’t supported by bountysource, so we can’t do it soon I think but we make it happen.

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38

These are the links

there are some GitHub issue tests I’ll remove in the future


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Bump! I am keen to hear what others think, this topic is extremely important for me :wink:

40

Hi guys,

the proposal of Alessio sounds good for me, I don’t know bountysource.com but I will give it a look.

I’m agree with the idea of creating a group of trusted person that can decide how to manage donations and or resocurces, all transactions could be trasparently shared with the community.