Dear Community,
I recently started thinking about how to make a project like CentOS
more transparent and open (especially for new contributors). The
http://wiki.centos.org/Team page (which Dag created about a year ago)
lists about 20 (more or less active) members, divided into core and
community contributors. I personally do not like that kind of
distinction. Of course there should be something like a 'board' and
clear responsibilities (release management and such), but at least the
board should be elected by all active members.
As we are a community of ppl with high technical skills probably only
persons with a valuable number of contributions and knowledge will be
elected to the board. A board member could of course be responsible
for core dev tasks, too.
The board itself could consist of a mix of technical, marketing, or
legal orientated ppl.
To make this happen, the new maintainer process has to be clarified
first. I am thinking about a (frequently maintained) list of open
tasks e.g. maintained within trac, from which a new (and even
existing) maintainer could choose one. Of course suggestions for task
that are not listed there could be published on the ML.
The 'Team' page should list major tasks one is working on or
responsible for. If one needs help (e.g. I am in need of help for the
website update), he/she could add a note to this task list (and maybe
even announce on the ML) with contact details (wiki homepage).
Other areas of taking part should and are already covered on:
http://wiki.centos.org/Contribute
But some aspects are still unclear:
THE WIKI:
For me a wiki is a collaboration platform which should be accessible
to every contributor in the same manner (except the front and user
pages). That means there should be a join process (where you have to
agree to the cc license) which then leads to EditGroup membership.
I do not see a good reason why new articles should first be published
on the ML. A user should be able to add a new article and then
announce it on the ML (if necessary). Same on the personal pages. Of
course it makes sense that new users introduce theirself on the ML but
they should already have access to their own personal page, before.
A comment function could be a good feature but in a comparatively
small community like ours, most of everything can be discussed via ML
or could be handled through page changelog.
I personally see no reason to honor authorship of created pages
besides the wiki page history.
THE BUGTRACKER:
The CentOS bugtracker contains a lot of upstream bugs that cannot be
fixed here. We have to make sure that these are tracked upstream and
fixed there.
THE CONTRIB REPO:
This repository has been re-invited in CentOS 5.3 but it's still
unclear what it's meant to be for. Could it contain non-free packages.
Should'nt oss packages better be pushed to EPEL/RPMFusion or even
RPMForge?
Where should spec files go? Is there an SVN with write access and an
automated build process, already?
Barriers on this site should be lowered when it's clear what the repo
is meant for.
QA:
Some of you might know that CentOS has got an QA process before
releases. This is an closed process and invite only. There where some
reasons for it (e.g. some ppl only took part in the beta program to
get early access to upcoming releases) but an invite only QA could not
be the solution. This process should be open to all members.
BARRIERS:
Overall, the barriers for new contributors are much too high. This can
also be fixed with something like a mentorship program where longtime
developers take care about new maintainers.
Best Regards
Marcus Moeller
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