[Python-Dev] Encouraging developers

[Titus Brown]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 11:10:22AM +0100, "Martin v. L?wis" wrote:
-> Giovanni Bajo schrieb:
-> > On 06/03/2007 10.52, Martin v. L?wis wrote:
-> > 
-> >> I can't see that the barrier at contributing is high. 
-> > 
-> > I think this says it all. It now appears obvious to me that people 
-> > inside the "mafia" don't even realize there is one. Thus, it looks like 
-> > we are all wasting time in this thread, since they think there is 
-> > nothing to be changed.

<delurk>

Hi, I just wanted to interject -- when I used the word "mafia", I meant
it in this sense:

"""
Informal. A tightly knit group of trusted associates, as of a political
leader: [He] is one of the personal mafia that [the chancellor]
brought with him to Bonn.
"""

(Martin, I certainly didn't intend to offend anyone by implying that
they were part of a criminal organization. ;)

I have a longer explanation of my view in the blog entry, and anyway I
don't want to belabor my own experiences too much, but I would like to
point out three things:

 * there's definitely a group of "trusted associates" -- committers,
   perhaps? -- and it's not at all clear to outsiders like me how new
   features, old patches, and old bugs are dealt with.

 * python-dev is an all-volunteer community.  In true open-source
   fashion, that means that it's incumbent upon people who HAVE
   problems/issues with a process (like me, and Giovanni) to propose
   solutions that either someone wants to implement, or that we can
   implement.  I certainly don't expect any of the committers to put
   tons of effort into a new initiative.

 * Much of the discussion on this issue of encouraging developers comes
   down to communicating better with non-python-dev people.
   
Unless someone is already doing it, I will try to write a summary of the
last few days of discussion and post it for review. The idea would be to
provide a simple one stop wiki page for people who want to contribute.

cheers,
--titus