[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists)

[Peter Huewe <PeterHuewe@gmx.de>]

Hi,

In order to continue our traditions I would like to propose again the topic of 
recruitment, but this time not only limiting to the hobbyists market.

We are definitely short on reviewers and thus have mostly overloaded 
maintainers.
For testers it's usually even worse - how many patches are actually tested?
Judging from what I read on LKML not that many.

So we should definitely discuss:
- how can we encourage hobbyists to become regular contributors
-- how to keep people interested, the drop-out rates are huge.
- encourage regular contributors to become reviewers and testers
- reviewers to become co-maintainers and finally maintainers (once the 
original maintainer is used up or moves up/on)


e.g. I think in the TPM subsystem we finally reached a good status, coming 
from having no active maintainer to a having at least a part-time maintainer 
with a two steady and excellent reviewers which also test manually most of the 
stuff!



From the 4.1 kernel report by jon corbet:
"over 60% of the changes going into this kernel passed through the hands of 
developers working for just five companies. This concentration reflects a 
simple fact: while many companies are willing to support developers working on 
specific tasks, the number of companies supporting subsystem maintainers is 
far smaller. Subsystem maintainership is also, increasingly, not a job for 
volunteer developers.."


-> How do we get companies to actively sponsor subsystem maintainership - if 
only at driver or subsubsystem level.
e.g.: I unfortunately failed at that with my company :/

-> Or how can we raise more funds to sponsor subsystem maintainer ship e.g. 
via Linux Foundation. 
(so that the maintainer atleast can buy some test-hardware)



Also I would be interested in:
- What are the effects of the Eudyptula Challenge? how many people are still 
actively contributing (more than whitespace changes)
- What are the effects of the OutReachforWomen Program? how many people are 
still actively contributing (more than whitespace changes)




Nominations:
Jason Cooper           (auto-nominated), last years 'speaker'
Greg KH				please... ;-)
Little Penguin		Eudyptula
Sarah Sharp 			OPW
Peter Huewe			Caught between hobbyist maintainer and sponsored dev.
					Wants to attend a KS :)