Re: side projects and sub projects

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

> On 27 Feb 2016, at 15:55, Patryk Laurent <address@hidden> wrote:
<snip>
> Hmm... this list does capture a lot.  Suppose to get started there was a 
> survey targeted at (potential) Users in which people ranked (1) the above 
> list in terms of which are most important to them for GNUstep; and also 
> ranked (2) what they perceive as the major impediments to using GNUstep in 
> that way (e.g., bugs; user docs; website; app availability; missing tools; 
> look and feel; up-to-date distribution; not enough activity on irc; etc.)
> 
> At the very least, this could be interesting information... but it could help 
> guide and plan.
> 
> Maybe a third question of such a survey (for Users that are also Developers) 
> could ask people to rank which of the impediments they felt they could see 
> themselves likely/capable to work on within the next e.g., 12 months...

Yes, that all sounds very reasonable/good to me.

I think that last point is key since, if there's nobody to do something, it's 
not going to get done.

However, in the past some people have complained about being asked to do 
anything themselves, whether because of genuine misunderstanding or simply 
because they are users/abusers (trolls).
So  'work on' would need to be clearly defined to avoid prejudices about 
contribution==coding.

There are a lot of ways someone can volunteer (particularly when looking at a 
side/sub project as a whole, rather than a small issue within it);

administration and leadership (communicating and supporting other people in a 
team and even bringing in new people)
techical development (the obvious;  but we shouldn't let people get away with 
saying they can't contribute because they don't code)
formal testing (real commitment to rapid turnaround of real testing, not just 
occasionally trying out an app)
documentation/publicity (software developers are rarely good at this)
finance (if you can't contribute anything else, you might be able to pay 
someone else to do so)

Unfortunately, if people want something but can't actually cooperate to make it 
happen, there's not a lot of point offering to support it.