[Adium-devl] Shawn's Bug Day Proposal

Mon Nov 12 21:34:45 UTC 2007

Alan,

Yes, we definitely don't have either of those two environments.  
However what we do have is at least one or two regular contributers to  
Adium on IRC for about 7 hours (possibly even more) out of every day.  
I don't mean to say that specifying one day out of each week means  
everyone or even the majority of people need to show up, but rather to  
leave things as they are; perhaps knowing about it might improve the  
existing conditions. Plus if we all agree on a day, we'll probably get  
a fair number of people who can pop in throughout that day - it works  
fairly well for the meetings, except this can be something like 'I can  
be on IRC between 3 and 5pm' (even if they don't show up... it's not  
mandatory - how could it be on a volunteer project?).

However the developer attendance works out, the objective is more to  
bring outsiders in by getting it announced.. through the blog and  
digg, perhaps other medium that others might have in mind?

We get a fair amount of popularity from announcing VV support in  
Adium, it couldn't hurt to try it as a way to draw in potential  
developers as well... we just need to phrase the name right ;)

Zac mentioned that much of Adium is non-standard Cocoa with rewritten  
code left and right, making it difficult to help out. While this may  
be true, it didn't stop me from fixing a couple (admittedly very tiny)  
bugs. If others get a bit of help, they might be able to do the same  
thing. Shawn's initial email seemed to imply that it would form  
rigidity in the development team for Adium. I don't believe this to be  
feasible at this time (as has been pointed out before) but I do think  
this idea might work as a way to get others interested in developing  
for Adium.

Jordan

On 12-Nov-07, at 5:01 PM, Alan Humpherys wrote:

> Jordan,
>
> Even though I currently spend very little time on Adium development,  
> perhaps my insights might shed some light on difficulties  
> implementing this proposal, together with the date driven  
> methodology proposed a few days ago.
>
> In a volunteer based organization, it is difficult to enforce  
> compliance to standard project management techniques.  Those  
> techniques (such as project plans and schedule driven development)  
> work well in one of two environments:
>
> 1) People are compensated so that they can prioritize spending time  
> on the project above other needs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)
>
> 2) There is a sufficiently large pool of available talent that  
> people can be dismissed from it without impact on the overall success.
>
> Unfortunately, Adium does not exist in either of these environments,  
> and so must rely upon the greatly varying amount of time people  
> chose to make available to the project.  For example, I was able to  
> spend full time on Open Source projects for 2 years as my financial  
> and employment status allowed me to do so, but right now, I can  
> spend less than 2 hours a week on it.
>
> I agree completely that the approach you suggest, together with  
> Colin's ideas a few days ago would be the best thing to help new  
> developers and our end customers, but as a rule they do not work for  
> the current developers. Therefore, we have to find creative ways to  
> modify these techniques so that they work in this volunteer  
> environment.
>
> I don't claim to have the answers here, but there are a few  
> principles that have worked well as I have participated in these  
> types of volunteer organizations for the last 20+ years:
>
> 1) Recognize people's contributions - that is often their only reward
>
> 2) Be understanding of missed commitments
>
> 3) Wherever possible remove barriers to entry to get new participants
>
> 4) Build friendships among team members
>
> 5) Minimize the impact of individuals who cause contention
>
> 6) Allow people to work in their areas of interest
>
> I know it's a long winded answer, but it might stimulate some  
> conversation that helps us come up with an optimal solution.
>
> - Alan
> ______
> Alan Humpherys
> Adium Development Team
> alangh at adiumx.com
> http://www.adiumx.com
>
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2007, at 11:37 AM, Jordan Schelew wrote:
>
>> 	Sorry to create a new thread about this, but I deleted the old one
>> accidentally! I was rather surprised to see nobody flat out turn down
>> the request and I happen to believe it to be a good idea, not so much
>> as to enforce development by the current team, but more so to
>> encourage outside development support.
>>
>> 	People have a tendency to often forget or ignore deadlines, but   
>> many
>> people also heavily rely on them. In this case, by setting a date, it
>> means those coders that do work well based on meetings or deadlines  
>> or
>> just schedules in general might take a closer look at Adium and help
>> by submitting patches on a more regular basis. To make this work, it
>> wouldn't necessarily require that all current developers work on
>> fixing bugs like a madman for a single day (as we all know everyone
>> here is very busy with other things in their lives... especially the
>> good ol' day job), but it would be nice to have a few who are very
>> familiar with the internal workings of Adium there to help push  
>> people
>> in the right direction for where they might start on a particular bug
>> fix or enhancement.
>>
>> 	On top of a couple devs in attendance (which happens to be true on
>> IRC most of the time anyway, but thought I'd mention it just to be
>> thorough) the only other thing that would be handy for making this
>> work would be the support of the primary people that are also acting
>> as PR for Adium. Evan, Colin, Eric, and Chris most particularly seem
>> to have regular blog posts and interaction with Adium fans. By  
>> helping
>> out with blog posts and Digg submissions, we just *might* be able to
>> entice a few people out of the thousands that read these things to  
>> not
>> just stop by and take a peek (of which a good hundred or so must have
>> some familiarity with coding) but also push them towards fixing a few
>> bugs.
>>
>> 	I really can't see how this is not worth a shot, and would like to
>> hear what others have to say about it. Shawn is looking to set a  
>> first
>> day for this to go live, but I think we should have the word put out
>> before it goes ahead since it's going to be fairly useless if nobody
>> hears about it...
>>
>> So... comments? Suggestions on a first day?
>>
>> Jordan
>>
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>
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