Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] hobbyist recruiting

[Levente Kurusa <levex@linux.com>]

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Hi,

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 07:57:34PM +0200, Sebastian Hesselbarth wrote:
> On 05/11/2014 07:30 AM, Jason Cooper wrote:
> > During the proposal period for last year's KS, there was quite a bit of
> > talk regarding maintainer survivorship.  imho, the best solution
> > involves continuously bringing in new maintainers and developers as they
> > crop up.  Should we encounter the unfortunate situation of needing to
> > find a replacement, having plenty of pre-trained developers on hand
> > gives us more flexibility.
> > 
> > As a hobbyist, I of course think the answer is recruiting more hobbyists
> > into the ranks :)
> > 
> > Unfortunately, we ran out of time during the lightning round last year
> > for me to give a short presentation on the topic of hobbyist recruiting.
> > 
> > I'm not a fan of reaching out in the direct sense.  I much prefer to
> > keep my eye out for new comers who seek out the community and make sure
> > they don't get ignored.  I know a lot of us have pretty aggressive mail
> > filtering out of necessity.  For those interested in assisting me, I'd
> > like to discuss creating some basic resources to facilitate spotting new
> > comers and directing them as appropriate.
> > 
> > Something as simple as creating a separate mailbox and ruleset for
> > senders we haven't seen before (with a few keywords to filter out the
> > spam) would help greatly.
> > 
> > On a related topic, I've also started receiving patches from first time
> > contributors who are taking part in the Eudyptula Challenge [1].  No, I
> > hadn't heard of it either.  It's very similar to the Matasano Crypto
> > Challenge [2], except that it builds up to contributing patches to the
> > kernel.
> > 
> > If this topic is accepted, I'll give a status update on the hobbyists
> > I've seen since the last KS, what work they've done (hint: those
> > Chromecasts can boot mainline now ;-), I'll also compile some rough
> > stats on first-time posters to the most popular email lists.  eg was it
> > legit, did anyone respond, did the poster return?  Currently, I'm
> > thinking lkml and lakml would be most relevant.  There may be other
> > lists I'm not aware of.  Please let me know if that's the case.
> > 
> > If anyone is already doing work in this area, I'd be interested in
> > hearing from you as well.

For the past few months, I've been doing research on new contributors
and what I've found is there plenty of interest but people don't seem
to knwo where to start their journey. Another problem is that they
begin but fail to continue. They don't submit more than one patch.

Of course, the Eudyptula challenge did bring some new developers,
but as far as I see most of them posted only one patch/patchset.
Maybe, there is a way so that they will stay and work more?
Keep them somehow in the game, i.e. badges? Mozilla's Open Badges?

> 
> I copy Jason's proposal. Based on my last year's experience with the
> hobbyist slot on ELC, I suggest to continue the effort. It was an
> exciting experience and nice to see the people you know from the
> mailing lists.
> 
> Although I think Ksummit would be more suited and more interesting
> for Kernel hobbyists to attend than ELC was. The chance to meet known
> people and participate in interesting topics is higher than on the
> (IMHO) commercially orientated ELC.

Indeed, as a hobbyist I can second this!

And AFAIK last year the folks had some hobbyist spots.

> 
> Also, for the co-maintainer topic, I think some maintainers really
> need some supporters reviewing the basic stuff already. There is
> some maintainers who have people reducing the vast amount of patches,
> but some others really need a helping hand.
> 
> IMHO, even hobbyists are suited for co-maintainership as it is a
> good opportunity to get more insight into core kernel, common
> mistakes, patch organization, and git workflow and we should
> encourage promising recuitees early to constantly assist other
> maintainers.
> 
> Sebastian
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