Re: Discussion About Community Contributions to NetBeans

Greetings Tom,
Greetings All,

Let me share my personal view with you.
Let's see what we have in the NetBeans community

   - human resources
      - evangelists,
      -  full time contributors,
      -  FOSS contributors;
      - people who use the development trunk regularly
      - people who use the issue management system
      - members who ask questions
      - people who read the web content
      - programmers in general
      - ...
   - technical resources
      - synced forum and mailing lists,
      - wiki
      - documentation
      -  ...


What we need is a clearly segmented *engagement pyramid*.

How do one promote to higher engagement?

The community (* you and I* ) should guide all the questions to the issue
management system.

The people according their role in the engagement pyramid should guide all
the relevant threads in the forum, mailing list, wiki discussion, blog
comment  and bind to an issue.
I know it's not easy but come on the Semantic web is coming. We can go for
IT.

It's clear you can be an evangelist (and get payed well by Oracle or any
other IT company) only if you learn and gain experience.
That's OK I'd like to study life long. I'd like to put effort in it.

I don't have the necessary resources to evolve I can't pay for it. I don't
know many people, I don't have much money.
But come on that's where FOSS come in.

I know what I am interested in but I can't tell. Ok, I can tell but I need
to be lucky to get some attention.

Everybody search the unread messages in their mailbox/nbusers list*/topic
I'am interested in*
Can you see it as a separate thread? Can you manage it? Can you bind it to a
specific task you can solve?

Of course you can. If it's your full time job. And... What happens if it's
not your top priority? See the poll ...


How do we guide relevant threads to the issue management system?
What would happen if increasing number of people started to fill in bugs?
How many people are aware the information available in the issue comments?

You have a message. You read it. You know what purpose it can serve. You
can't share this information with people who are not so experienced as you.
Maybe you can. But again it's not your full time job so you may lose
interest soon.

An Issue should be an rdf:Resource
a NetBeans community member should be able  to make statements about it.

I hope you can get the point. Because now I don't have more time to make it
more clear :-)

Zoltán Baráti (Zolta)
Fun of NetBeans from Budapest,Hungary


engagement piramyd:
[1] http://blog.wiserearth.org/a-simple-model-for-community-engagement/
[2] http://groundwire.org/blog/groundwire-engagement-pyramid

[3] FOSS Free and Open Source Software http://netbeans.org/ :-)

[4] Semantic web activity http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/


2011/8/1 Tom Wheeler <[email protected]>

> Peter Belbin, a fellow NetBeans community member, recently e-mailed
> the NetBeans Technical Community Manager Jiří Kovalský regarding a
> poll [1] on the NetBeans Web site. The poll asked "What best describes
> your experience with NetBeans Plugins?" and offered four choices to
> denote the degree to which missing or outdated plugins affected their
> use of NetBeans.
>
> Peter made several interesting points in his message, and Jiří cc'ed
> me on his response since it was relevant to discussions we've been
> having on the NetBeans Governance Board.  Peter gave me permission to
> summarize our discussion here, since I think we'd all benefit from
> having more voices in the discussion.
>
> 34% of respondents said that missing or outdated plugins limit their
> use of NetBeans, while 22% said that some useful plugins are missing.
> When combined, this means that 56% of these people found the current
> state of available plugins somehow affected their use of NetBeans.
> Although this is not a scientific poll by any means, there were more
> than 3,000 responses so it is noteworthy.
>
> I found the subsequent poll interesting.  It asks "What do you do when
> faced with a problem using NetBeans IDE?"  Of the 1617 responses, just
> 21% said they file a bug report and only 5% fix the bug and contribute
> a patch.
>
> I'm pleased as a community that Oracle has continued to fund NetBeans
> development.  I want to be clear that I am speaking *only* as a
> community member here, but it looks like Oracle will continue to do
> so, with focus on the areas that are important to their business (i.e.
> those which attract customers, increase market share, showcase key
> technologies or provide some other competitive advantage).  This
> implies that there will be technologies which they choose not to add
> to NetBeans (e.g. support for niche programming languages or source
> control systems).  In other cases, they may choose not to fund new
> development for certain features already in the IDE (e.g. support for
> Ruby or UML).  In either case, it's important that Oracle hands these
> off to the community so they can take the lead on development.  I feel
> they've done this in all cases, but it's also important that the
> community steps up to work on what matters to them and that they can
> do so succesfully.
>
> The question remains: if 56% of NetBeans users are affected to some
> degree by missing or outdated plugins, why is only a small percentage
> contributing back?  The discussion between Peter, Jirka and I also
> touched on whether there were viable ways to make it easier to
> contribute code and whether there could be some way for people to
> contribute money rather than code in order to support the features
> they found important.
>
> In order to contribute code, I think you need three things: technical
> knowledge of Java/NetBeans APIs, familiarity with the patch
> contribution process and the motivation to do it.  Although there is
> still a big learning curve with learning the NetBeans APIs, the
> tireless work by Geertjan Wielenga and others in documenting how to
> use them effectively is demonstrated in the hundreds of applications
> built on the NetBeans Platform by independent developers.  As part of
> my work on the NetBeans Goverance Board, I plan to attack the second
> problem by starting a "First Patch" program to mentor new NetBeans
> developers through submitting their first patches.  This is in
> addition, of course, to the remarkable work  that Jiří Kovalský has
> done managing the NetFIX and NetCAT programs for many years.
>
> We're working hard on lowering the barriers so that more people can
> contribute to NetBeans.  The one aspect we need help with is
> motivation.  I'd like your honest feedback in helping to understand
> what does (or does not) motivate someone to contribute to an open
> source project, and in particular, NetBeans.  What could we reasonably
> do to turn more people from passive NetBeans users into people who
> actively try to make the IDE better?  After all, any NetBeans user is
> by definition also a developer.
>
> If you have contributed to NetBeans, what motivated you to do so?  If
> you haven't, what stopped you?  If you're active in other open source
> projects, what specific things could we learn from them?
>
> And finally, do you think it's practical for community members to chip
> in money (in lieu of code) so that other community members will have
> an incentive to develop or maintain specific plugins or features?
> Having been involved in some community programs (such as NetBeans
> Innovators Grant [3]) that involved money crossing international
> boundaries, I know this can be a logistical nightmare.  Any references
> to projects which handle community funding succesfully *and* in
> accordance with all relevant laws and regulations are welcome.
>
> Thank you for your thoughts,
>
> Tom Wheeler
> NetBeans Community Member
>
>
> [1] http://netbeans.org/community/polls/
> [2] http://platform.netbeans.org/screenshots.html
> [3] http://netbeans.org/grant/
>
>
> --
> Tom Wheeler
> http://www.tomwheeler.com/
>