Re: Discussion About Community Contributions to NetBeans

From my personnel perspective, main issue on contributing to NetBeans Core
is setup dev env. as current one need to  clone hg repository
http://hg.netbeans.org/ . this repository is  HUGE (3.21GB
see attached screenshot ) and pain for somebody who want do the first
patch/minor patchs  :-(.
My suggestion is we must have better build setup(May be Maven :-) ) with
small cluster of repositories sync with main repository.

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Tom Wheeler <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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 denote the degree to which missing or outdated plugins affected their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 34% of respondents said that missing or outdated plugins limit their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/
>



-- 
Best regards,

Anuradha G