Re: Use the source Luke!

[Marc Britten <yugami@usxchange.net>]

I agree with the anon CVS option, easy to setup, and a good test for new
developers.

Aaron Turner wrote:
> 
> 
> I've been trying to think of ways to increase interest in the project as
> well as speed up it's development.  It's been a long and hard road so far
> and every now and then it's good to reflect on it and see what ya can
> learn.
> 
> So I started to think about our development model and trying to figure out
> how sucessful it's been up 'til now.  My honest rating is poor.  We've
> been at various stages of planing, design, and coding for well over a year
> now, and frankly I feel we should be a lot farther along.  Part of that is
> Jason's insistance in doing things right... doing it right the first time
> does take longer initially, but it should speed things up in the long
> term.  But overall, I think this was the right thing to do.
> 
> I think when you look at our history, the biggest problem has been finding
> enough people with the interest and time to do the work.  We've had a lot
> of people come and go, many who cost us a lot of our time by asking
> questions and needing accounts setup and the like, who never once
> contribued even a line of code.  Of course there are exceptions to this.
> Marc for example has done a stellar job with htdig- I couldn't be happier.
> 
> People tend to come in all excited about working, then they quickly taper
> off; often not even replying to emails I send to them, until finally they
> reply "Sorry, I just don't have the time I thought I did."  or "Gee I'm
> just not interested in that anymore."
> 
> So what can we do to change this pattern?  How can we weed out these
> people before they suck up too much of our time?
> 
> Seems to me the best way would be to open up CVS to the world anonymous
> read-only and let people email us patches/code blocks which are then
> reviewed by the core developers.  At this point, I don't think we really
> have much too lose...  Even better it's easy to do.  Just make a few
> changes for CVS and instant anonymous account access for anyone. It will
> of course require that we start getting devel with more useful
> information, so people can actually figure things out, and something will
> have to be done about the Users table so people don't go around running
> crack on our passwords, but that is pretty easy to fix.
> 
> We can also use it as a test.  Those people who are actually interested in
> helping will be required to write some code.  Once they've proven
> themselves, they will be offered a r/w account, shell access, etc.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --
> Aaron Turner, Core Developer       http://vodka.linuxkb.org/~aturner/
> Linux Knowledge Base Organization  http://linuxkb.org/
> Because world domination requires quality open documentation.
> aka: aturner@vicinity.com, aturner@pobox.com, ion_beam_head@ashtech.net
> The difference between `Unstable' and `Usable' is only two characters: NT