[illumos-Discuss] gdamore wishes he knew what would motivate more developers to work on illumos bugs....

[Gleb Kursou]

Forwarded conversation
Subject: gdamore wishes he knew what would motivate more developers to
work on illumos bugs....
------------------------

From: Gleb Kursou <kursou.gleb at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:24 PM
To: discuss at lists.illumos.org, opensolaris-discuss at opensolaris.org
Cc: garrett at damore.org


Garrett, so you asked this question: "gdamore wishes he knew what
would motivate more developers to work on illumos bugs...."

I keep it short - and public - to start a discussion about how the
Illumos gate should be managed. I - and many other people - think the
biggest problem is *your* own behavior. This can be solved but
requires a huge leap from you *first*. You need to work on your
behavior towards people.

I've collected a few points from yesterdays Unix user group meeting in
Munich, Germany where the participants think changes are mandatory.
1. You seem to be treating people like a dictator, not as a first
among equals. This is discouraging for people new to your project who
are not familiar with you. You should work on this.
2. You are what opensource management book call a "tree squatter". You
want to be in control of everything, even the smallest detail.
Consider *delegating* control of parts of the source tree to other
people, such as the experts who work on that particular code.
3. You wrote that Illumos will be a meritocracy. You should live this
meritocracy then. Delegate control to the experts. You can choose who
should the experts be but you have to delegate control to them.
4. You rant in abrasive, pejorative and discouraging ways about other
people's code without even attempting to learn how the code works and
you try to dictate a design without listening to the people working on
this code. Consider listen to people and learn. First. Think. Ask. And
then you can rant.
5. You are unable to make compromises between conflicting goals.
Consider compromises. Consider others had to make compromises and
accept them as reality.
6. Your goal should be to build a community but your behavior has
created the absolute opposite: Almost no one wants to contribute to
Illumos. If you think you can't build the community yourself find
someone who has experience with building communities. It's no shame to
let others help you.

Gleb

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From: Gleb Kursou <kursou.gleb at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:25 PM
To: discuss at lists.illumos.org, opensolaris-discuss at opensolaris.org
Cc: garrett at damore.org


These two books might be helpful for you:
The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation,  Jono
Bacon, ISBN: 978-0596156718
Open Source Software: Implementation and Management, Paul Kavanagh,
Digital Press, 2004, ISBN: 1555583202

Gleb