Sun, 15 Nov 2009
Choosing something to work in Free Software is hard
Debian is primiarly organized into mostly one-person "projects," namely packaging a piece of software. But in the past few days on Planet Debian, there has been discussion about how existing packages in Debian need more help. Tim Retout wrote:
There's a huge role for non-DDs to play in getting fixes into Debian, but as far as I remember, the emphasis of the mentors documentation is on packaging rather than bug fixing.
I think this is a serious problem across Free Software. Open source contributors are grouped into projects. If you're burning out on what you're working on lately, or you are looking to become a new contributor, it's hard to know what projects need your help. As someone who knows Python and Debian packaging, it would be nice to be able to search Debian for Python-language packages that need help.
I also think that Tim hit on a really important social point later in his post:
It seems to me that the mentor relationship works better when DDs get to know particular people
Tim's right that personal relationships make a big difference. I got serious about my NM application when I asked someone I already knew to sponsor my packages.
But not everyone can be so lucky as to have a Debian Developer as a friend. And many projects aren't as friendly as Debian; there's no official mentorship available.
I think that we need to start paying a lot more attention to personal relationships all across Free Software.
(I'm working on a web tool in this space. Join me in #openhatch on irc.freenode.net to discuss it, or just stay tuned until I write it up tomorrow.)
