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Outreach Program for Women IRC meetings take place in #opw on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org). Anyone interested in participating or helping with the program is welcome in the channel.
During January-April internship period, we are having two meetings with a theme "What's there to learn?", as proposed by Sumana Harihareswara from Wikimedia. It's a great question one of the interns posed to her mentor. Representatives from the participating organizations present the big picture of their organization's workflow and various activities that have to happen for their software to get made and used.
This is a log from the second one of these meetings that took place on March 12, 2013. You might also like to review the log of the first meeting with presentations from Wikimedia, Fedora, JBoss, OpenStack, Open Technology Institute.
1. In this Log
- presentations from 5 of the 10 participating organizations about the "big picture" of how their projects get done
- Mozilla - Lukas Blakk
- GNOME - Bastien Nocera
- Deltacloud - Marios Andreou
- Subversion - Stefan Sperling
- OpenITP - Sandra Ordonez
- getting involved in a free software project discussion
2. In Attendance
Interns: aleta, anteaya, APexil, Deindre, gbg, housewifehacker, ingu1, ladquin, LittleBohemian, llmelon, marija, mitevam, njerichelimo, Petra, priyanka_nag, salarcon, satabdi, sucheta, tsabi, tunabananas, valeriej, vkmc, wowsig
Mentors and coordinators: aday, andre, annegentle, danielsh, Dereckson, georgiabullen, hadess, iccha, jfuerth, jpich, jrbaldwin, karenesq, kittykat, lsblakk, marina, marios, marktraceur, mizmo, qgil, sandraordonez, sri, stsp, sumanah
Past interns: fabiana, fujii_, gonyere, mmcasetti_afk, sanjien
Community members: aruna, engreen, nirbheek, pleia2
3. Meeting
3.1. Greetings
<lsblakk> hi <lsblakk> should i get started? <karenesq> hi lsblakk! <karenesq> let <karenesq> s wait a minute for marina <lsblakk> sure thing <karenesq> she usually moderates <karenesq> lsblakk: thanks for doing this so early!!! * aday (~aday@188-222-97-166.zone13.bethere.co.uk) has joined #opw <karenesq> and thanks to everyone else who has stayed up late or gotten up early <aleta> morning! (6am here) <lsblakk> yup, me too <LittleBohemian> Good morning, 6am here too. <karenesq> morning! <vkmc> Hey * vkmc prepares a warm cup of coffee for those early risers
3.2. Mozilla Presentation
<karenesq> lsblakk: you know what, why don't we get started. I just took a look at the genda and it's a lot to get through <lsblakk> ok <lsblakk> i put slides up here: http://lukasblakk.com/relman-slides/assets/fallback/index.html * sumanah (~sumanah@cpe-74-72-229-171.nyc.res.rr.com) has joined #opw <lsblakk> the deck is quite long but we can focus on a few in particular <lsblakk> re: how we ship Firefox products <lsblakk> skip to slide 4 <lsblakk> to start <lsblakk> for anyone unfamiliar with Mozilla - this is what you need to know - we release often <lsblakk> every 6 weeks there is a new major version number bump of Firefox <lsblakk> we started this after Firefox 4 took almost 1.5 years to get out the door <lsblakk> that was... too long * Petra (~chatzilla@50.11.77.200) has joined #opw <lsblakk> we can't keep our mindshare with that length of time, and as an open source project in an environment with heavy hitters like google/apple we have to otherwise we lose our ability to influence the direction of the web <lsblakk> so <lsblakk> we move to rapid releases and if we click through a bit you can see how that works <lsblakk> click through the animation on the next slide (5-10) to see our version "trains" move <lsblakk> we have 4 channels that we use to help get us to software that is ready to ship <lsblakk> as a release manager, i primarily care most about Beta since that is the just-about-to-ship channel <lsblakk> for example, right now i'm driving FF20 through beta and we are about to build the fourth week's beta of that version <lsblakk> this is the last beta where i will let people land speculative fixes or anything where we might have concern about needing to backout before ship <lsblakk> since we only release betas once per week we have to be more careful <lsblakk> but with nightlies (go forward with slides to learn about nightlies) we have daily builds of that code <lsblakk> and it's the most bleeding edge of Firefox <lsblakk> where all the feature work is supposed to happen <lsblakk> as well as tons of bug fixes for regressions, crashes, etc <lsblakk> there's a lot more churn on nightly, obviously <lsblakk> so that's where the developers have to watch the tree: http://tbpl.mozilla.org/ <lsblakk> which tells them when they've broken on a test or a performance metric <lsblakk> if anyone is ever interested in participating with Mozilla - using Nightly is a great way to start <lsblakk> that, and then filing bugs when things are broken on Nightly - doing regression bisecting <lsblakk> which is how we find things as early as possible, and then get the fix in before shipping <lsblakk> another great resource, if you want to learn more about the nitty gritty of what makes Firefox - check out my old professor's notes on a week-long crash course http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Real_World_Mozilla <lsblakk> which covers doing all the things our devs do daily, but in a new person friendly way <lsblakk> also come hang out in irc.mozilla.org in #introduction <lsblakk> which is a great place to ask questions <lsblakk> i think the slides cover a lot about releasing - are there specific questions people have? <karenesq> we also have a general q&a session planned for the end <hadess> i like the slidedeck <lsblakk> ah, i cannot stick around to the end <karenesq> me too <lsblakk> i can answer a couple of questions now but then i have to go start my workday <lsblakk> and walk dogs <karenesq> ah lsblakk, ok. let's leave some time now if anyone has any questions. <vkmc> No questions here, the presentation was great, thanks! <karenesq> looks like you're off the hook, lsblakk Looking at the schedule, we should probably move on to hadess <hadess> sure <karenesq> If people have questions can they email you lsblakk or contact you? <karenesq> <lsblakk> absolutely <lsblakk> i'm in a lot of mozilla irc channels <lsblakk> and i'll keep this channel connected for a while <karenesq> great, thanks lsblakk!
3.3. GNOME Presentation
<karenesq> Bastien, you're up * ingu1 (~Adium@103.16.14.5) has joined #opw <hadess> i'm bastien, i work on GNOME for Red Hat, and i'll try my best to answer questions about our project <hadess> i'll start by talking about our contributors <hadess> we currently have 362 foundation members <hadess> though not all foundation members commit to gnome's development, we also have many more committers that aren't foundation members <hadess> especially if we start including downstream distributors patching and fixing gnome <hadess> or people hacking on "related" projects (i'll touch on those later on) <hadess> we have designers in our community, and loads of work for them to do <hadess> you can take a look at what they work on in our wiki: https://live.gnome.org/Design * wow_sig (~wowsig@122.167.245.204) has joined #opw <hadess> the designers' tasks (as you'll see if you browse the design area of the wiki) go from blue-sky thinking <hadess> all the way down to fixing a string, an icon, or a misplaced menu item in an application <hadess> i would encourage you to browse the GnomeOS area of the design wiki, it has plenty of interesting things which we hope to work on soon <hadess> and if you're really interested, you can follow all the changes made to the wiki: http://www.hadess.net/2011/12/stalkw-following-designs-easy-way.html <hadess> in the wiki you'll see links to bugzilla bugs for some of the features we want to implement * aday i can answer questions about gnome design if anyone has any later * marinaz (~marina@pool-74-104-159-250.bstnma.fios.verizon.net) has joined #opw <hadess> here's a designer :) <hadess> bugzilla is our main bug and feature tracking tool <aday> :) * karenesq should have said that she can answer any questions you may have on our foundation structure later :) <hadess> i personally use gnome's bugzilla as well as fedora's, red hat's, freedesktop.org's as well as a lot of other bug tracking tools depending on the projects we work on <hadess> in terms of languages used, gnome's core is mostly written in C <hadess> though we have a growing ecosystem of applications (and sometimes core parts) written in python, vala, javascript, and plenty of others <hadess> gnome-shell is half-C/half-javascript for example, and javascript will be one of the main languages we'll focus our application development experience on in the coming releases * sucheta has quit (Ping timeout: 600 seconds) <hadess> gnome's current main form-factor "target" is the laptop (despite what you might have read in blogs and comments ;) * jrbaldwin (~Adium@rrcs-24-103-111-62.nyc.biz.rr.com) has joined #opw * priyanka_nag has quit (http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client) <hadess> we also have a strong focus on corporate/kiosk type desktops as well as workstations <hadess> we do have some on-going work on tablets, though touch support isn't limited to tablets nowadays, as you've seen from "windows 8" laptops and desktops * jfuerth (~Adium@nat-pool-3-rdu.redhat.com) has joined #opw <hadess> (my desktop machine has a touch screen, and gnome is more usable on it than windows 8, for what it's worth ;) <tsabi> :) * georgiabullen (~Adium@74.113.160.38) has joined #opw <sanjien> \me agrees <hadess> as far as how our "organisation" (gnome) makes money, i'll leave that to karenesq, she can explain all the fundraising gnome does as a not-for-profit <karenesq> oh! ok hadess! We take in revenue in a few ways <hadess> a lot of contributors are volunteers, especially in the people not doing development (translators, documentation, marketing, etc.) <karenesq> 1) we have an advisory board that has no control over what the project does but is a collection of our top corporate supporters and nonprofit participating orgs. The companies pay a fee to be on the advisory board <karenesq> 2) we run nonprofit fundraising campaigns, like our friends of gnome privacy campaign right now! <karenesq> 3) we try to come out ahead on our conferences ;) * georgiabullen is now known as georgia_afk * georgia_afk (~Adium@74.113.160.38) has left #opw <karenesq> I think we should probably move to questions very soon hadess! <hadess> nearly done :) <hadess> as i mentioned <hadess> a lot of contributors are volunteers, especially in the people not doing development (translators, documentation, marketing, etc.) <hadess> on the development side, we have people working for linux distributions, and quite a few consultants, working on GNOME itself for projects and clients <hadess> or working on specific parts of the gnome stack or related (clutter, GTK+, GStreamer, wayland, etc.) * gonyere (~gonyere@160.sub-75-242-64.myvzw.com) has joined #opw <hadess> finally, gnome's strengths and weaknesses <hadess> this is my personal opinion btw <hadess> i think the gnome community is very good at "draining the swamp" of its technical problems * priyanka_nag (ca478f02@ircip3.mibbit.com) has joined #opw <hadess> things like d-bus, hal (and its replacements, upower, udisks), NetworkManager, PulseAudio, systemd, wayland all have their roots in GNOME <hadess> we've been creating better foundations for which to run our software on, and modernise it (10 years ago, no d-bus, and you had to mount your usb keys by hand for example) <hadess> what we're not so good at, but we're getting better <hadess> i think the barrier to entry for application developers is too high <hadess> and we haven't been able to force our stack to modernise fast enough <hadess> (some of the great projects mentioned above were options, which created more problems than they sometimes fixed) <hadess> and onto questions :) <karenesq> let's save those until the end (if marina agrees) <karenesq> since we're running so late <hadess> sure, i'll stay around <karenesq> thanks hadess! <ingu1> I want to chip in some words, may I please? <karenesq> sure, ingu1, let's just keep it short so that we don't take too much time away from the rest of the presentations <marina> ingu1: sure <ingu1> uhm I will speak at the end, thank you :) <karenesq> ok ingu1! * gbg (~quassel@host86-159-0-181.range86-159.btcentralplus.com) has joined #opw <marina> ingu1: ok, thanks! we look forward to your comments! <aday> hadess, is it worth mentioning the release cycle?
3.4. Deltacloud Presentation
<karenesq> marios is up next to talk about DeltaCloud <marios> karenesq: thanks - I'll do my best to make up some time <marios> Hi - I'm marios and I work for Red Hat on the Apache Deltacloud project - some info/introduction if you've never heard of deltacloud before @ https://deltacloud.apache.org/about.html <aday> too late :) * gonyere_ has quit (Ping timeout: 600 seconds) <marios> also a presentation from one of the core contributors that was given at fosdem this year is at http://mfojtik.im/tmp/preso/deltacloud-fosdem/ <marios> So, with respect to 'what is there to learn' - in my mind there are two aspects... technical and 'admin' or workflow-related <marios> on the technical side, deltacloud is a RESTful web service written in ruby, using the sinatra framework <marios> there are various other 'bits' that come into play here, like use of haml for generating views, and the fact the we also expose the CIMI API as an alternative frontend for clients <marios> with respect to the workflow - we are a very distributed team (in fact, none of us are in the same location, or at least most aren't) <marios> so that in itself is in my opinion a good experience for someone looking to contribute as an intern or as a contributor moving forward <marios> we use git for version control and apache jira for bugs <marios> we have weekly community calls to discuss current work, future planning, answer questions etc. we use google hangouts for this and record our sessions <marios> recordings to past calls are at https://deltacloud.apache.org/contact.html <marios> with respect to the 'user need' that deltacloud addresses, I think this is fairly obvious, as in <marios> provision of a cloud abstraction layer to deal with vendor lock in <marios> and this is reinforced by the ability to speak 'CIMI' as well as the vanilla 'Deltacloud API' to a deltacloud server <marios> more information on supported APIs is at https://deltacloud.apache.org/cimi-rest.html and https://deltacloud.apache.org/rest-api.html <marios> besides the work on the core deltacloud server and 'drivers' <marios> (drivers are the abstraction we use for that part of the code which implements cloud provider specific APIs, see https://deltacloud.apache.org/drivers.html for current drivers) <marios> there is also a lot of auxilliary work on upstream gems that deltacloud depends on <marios> e.g you are working with the openstack driver which uses the ruby-openstack rubygem and you come across a bug in that gem. we will more often than not also submit the fix for it rather than just reporting the issue <marios> there are many rubygems and upstream libraries that deltacloud commiters have contributed to in the past <marios> (how am i doing for time?) <marina> marios: you have about 8 more minutes total <marina> marios: we can move on to questions when you are ready <marios> the "How many people overall are taking part in your project?" is a hard one to answer because we don't really have a 'foundation' with registered members to keep track of this <marios> in general we have contributions from many people, both individuals and organisations <karenesq> marios: you're doing well on time, you've got 7 minutes left if you need them - sorry to everyone else that we're running late) <marios> organisations will often contribute the code required to 'talk' to their cloud API - for example somebody from Fujitsu or IBM will work with us to implement their 'driver' <marios> but there are also many individuals that come across bugs and either report them (which by the way, reporting bugs is a GREAT contribution to make to a project) <marios> but also seek help about how to address it <marios> marina: karenesq: thanks, couple more points and i'll leave the rest to questions <marios> ok, finally "How do your organization and people working on your software make money? " <marios> well 'organisation' - Deltacloud is an Apache project <marios> so Apache itself isn't making money from Deltacloud in that sense <marios> but Red Hat is paying my wages to work on Deltacloud and related projects <marios> Red Hat incorporated Deltacloud in products and makes money from support and subscriptions. <marios> ok, there's a lot more to say, but I'd rather it was guided by specific questions. :) <marios> hope that was a useful start. <marina> marios: super useful! thank you! <marina> does anyone have questions? <anteaya> hi marios, I am an intern with openstack. what does the deltacloud/openstack interaction look like? <marios> anteaya: sure, well, we have a openstack driver so you can use deltacloud to speak to an openstack instance... sec i have some links that might be useful <satabdi> I have a general question addressed to all the presenters. You may answer it later. I am a programmer and a lot of these projects seem very interesting. How do I start contributing to these projects? Are there mentors around like we have in OPW internship projects? <marios> anteaya: this one's a bit old but might be a good start: http://www.mariosandreou.com/deltacloud/2012/02/23/deltacloud-openstack_v2API-driver.html <anteaya> so both projects accomplish the same task, and can talk to each other? <anteaya> thanks for the link <marios> anteaya: we (core deltacloud contributors) are also maintainers of the ruby-openstack rubygem at https://github.com/ruby-openstack/ruby-openstack <marios> anteaya: well, they don't really accomplish the same task though <marios> anteaya: with deltacloud you can speak to ec2, openstack, ibm smart cloud, fujitsu fgcp, opennebula, vsphere, rhevm, gogrid, digitalocean and many others <marina> satabdi: great question! marios can answer it now, and we'll make sure others answer it in the end! * annegentle (~annegentl@99-23-193-214.lightspeed.austtx.sbcglobal.net) has joined #opw <marios> satabdi: thanks that is indeed a great question <anteaya> marios thank you <marios> satabdi: well, for deltacloud in particular you can start by looking at the website and posting a question (like 'what can i do?' on the mailing list, see https://deltacloud.apache.org/contact.html ) <marios> satabdi: then, you may want to join the next community call <marios> satabdi: these are announced on the mailing list, next one is tomorrow <satabdi> marios, I particularly ask, because I have sort of inhibition that people might be very busy to entertain my naive queries which I am sure to have <marios> satabdi: speaking more generally, depends on what your skillset/desire to learn is. <marios> satabdi: NOT AT ALL. if someone working on an open source project gives this impression then IMO they don't represent the ethos of open source <marios> satabdi: of course, you may just get a pointer to documentation, rather than an answer :) <anteaya> I see dprince is one of the maintainers of the ruby-openstack rubygem, he is very active in openstack <satabdi> :) <marios> satabdi: so, things like bug reports are an excellent way to start contributing <njerichelimo> satabdi: marios and mfojtik have entertained enough of my 'naive' questions. But you learn a lot, and fast! :) <sumanah> marios: are you on OpenHatch? Do you have a "how to get started" page like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker or https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Contributor_Documentation/1/html/Translation_Quick_Start_Guide/index.html ? <satabdi> ok <marios> njerichelimo: you've been a great contributor from day #1 <marina> let's take the rest of the questions for marios to the end of the presentations - feel free to send him or earlier presenters a pm so that they can prepare an answer (and share it in the end) <satabdi> marios, thanks for your answer <marios> satabdi: sure <marios> marina: thanks <marina> marios: thank you!!! <njerichelimo> marios: :) thanks! <satabdi> njerichelimo, am happy to hear that
3.5. Subversion Presentation
<marina> stsp: are you ready to present? <stsp> yes! <marina> stsp: the floor is yours :)! <stsp> k thanks * qgil (~qgil@216.38.130.165) has joined #opw <stsp> i've prepared some text snippets that i'll paste into the channel <stsp> Hi, I'm Stefan, and I'm here to talk about the Apache Subversion project (http://subversion.apache.org/). <stsp> I started getting involved with Subversion in June 2007. <hadess> satabdi, btw, i'm just really bad at answering mail in general :) <stsp> Back then, the project was not yet part of the Apache Software Foundation. <stsp> Let's talk about the project's history for a minute. <hadess> satabdi, hope you'll stay on contributing to gnome though :) <stsp> The project was initiated and initially funded by the company CollabNet in <stsp> 2000 because they needed a replacement for CVS. CVS was used as the version <stsp> control system component of CollabNet's TeamForge platform (a product that <stsp> provides a platform similar to sourceforge.net, but is meant to be installed <stsp> by corporations for internal use). CVS had many limitations that made it <stsp> hard to use in this context. <stsp> CollabNet already had ties to the Open Source community at the time (some <stsp> staff were involved in the Apache Software Foundation), and they realised <stsp> that building a new version control system is a huge task that they could <stsp> not easily accomplish on their own. <stsp> At the time, a few CVS developers were making plans to write a new open <stsp> source version control system from scratch to replace CVS. They combined <stsp> efforts with CollabNet which provided some funding, which allowed the <stsp> developers to work on the project full-time. <stsp> Even though Subversion started out as a project funded by a single company, <stsp> it has always been run as a community project. The developer community (and, <stsp> by extension, the user community) gets to decide where the project is headed, <stsp> by means of discussion and consensus. No single entity can claim unilateral <stsp> control of the project. <stsp> Subversion moved to the Apache Software Foundation in 2009, which made sense <stsp> because of community overlap, as well as the fact that Subversion relies on <stsp> other Apache Subversion Foundation projects as dependencies (apr.apache.org <stsp> and httpd.apache.org, for example). <stsp> Currently there are several companies backing the project. These companies <stsp> provide commercial support and consulting services and employ a few Subversion <stsp> committers. <stsp> There are also individuals who either work on Subversion in their spare <stsp> time or have a job which involves dealing with Subversion to a certain <stsp> degree (for example, one developer works at a research hospital and <stsp> manages Subversion servers and other infrastructure there). <stsp> The Subversion project has 49 "full committers" (people who can make changes to <stsp> the entire source code directly), as well as several dozens of <stsp> "partial committers" (people who can make changes to a particular area of the <stsp> source code), and almost 1000 patch contributors. <stsp> The committers are listed here: <stsp> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/COMMITTERS <stsp> and you can see a list of our patch contributors here: <stsp> http://www.red-bean.com/svnproject/contribulyzer/ <stsp> Contributors to Subversion can learn about how to interact within a <stsp> mature and healthy open source community, as well as how to tackle <stsp> and solve technical problems within a large and complex system. <stsp> A lot can be learned about software architecture and maintenance. <stsp> Any change to the system must remain backwards-compatibility and not break <stsp> the existing ecosystem of third-party tools which has developed around <stsp> Subversion. This can be quite challenging when trying to improve things. <stsp> As a community, we try to keep the barrier of entry very low. <stsp> We have clearly documented community procedures and conventions to help <stsp> new contributors with getting involved quickly, see <stsp> http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/ <stsp> However, since Subversion is a very mature and complex project, the technical <stsp> barrier of entry is rather high. We're always trying to help new contributors <stsp> get off the ground, but as with many things it takes time and dedication to <stsp> become familiar with the technical internals of Subversion (and it also takes <stsp> time and dedication to explain them to others :) * stsp slows down a bit <satabdi> hadess, oh! :) I was just going to say that having a wonderful mentor like you (whom I very often bombard with my questions!) in this project really encouraged me to continue and learn a lot. [sorry for being a little off topic] <stsp> The community guide I linked to above reflects this. <stsp> . It is mainly geared <stsp> towards people who are already familiar with the technical aspects of <stsp> contributing to open source projects. <stsp> Our OPW intern, Gabriela Gibson (see <stsp> http://wiki.apache.org/subversion/GabrielaGibson), has brought our attention to this problem and has suggested ways we could improve: <stsp> http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-dev/201301.mbox/raw/%3C50F6BB13.4060302@gmail.com%3E/2 <stsp> Her suggestions include clearly stating the skill set new contributors should <stsp> have when tackling a particular task, as well as making our list of open tasks <stsp> more easy to find on our website. <stsp> New contributors get involved by submitting patches to our development mailing <stsp> list (see the community guide for details). The patches usually go through <stsp> a few iterations of review, and get committed to svn.apache.org when they <stsp> have passed review. <stsp> We use a bug tracker at svn.tigris.org. However it is mostly used for tracking <stsp> the state of known issues. We discourage people from filing new issues before <stsp> discussing them on the mailing list, because in the past this resulted <stsp> in a flood of issues that lacked information, were actually user questions, <stsp> or had other problems. The tracker can be useful for new contributors <stsp> looking for things to do, but even then it is a good idea to talk to the <stsp> mailing list, too. <stsp> When considering new contributors for commit access, the most important <stsp> thing we consider is whether the contributor shows "good judgement" and <stsp> gets along well with others. Technical skills are important of course, <stsp> but secondary to "good judgement". <stsp> Subversion itself is written in C. Python is used for the automated test suite. <stsp> Subversion also contains some code in other languages such as Perl, Ruby, <stsp> and Java, but those are mostly glue layers to allow people to embed Subversion <stsp> into programs written in those languages. <stsp> Subversion has seen some decline in use by the open source community in <stsp> recent years, since distributed version control systems such as Git and <stsp> Mercurial are better suited for the way most open source community operate. <stsp> It is still being used in the open source world, of course, for instance <stsp> by FreeBSD and GCC. But it is not the most popular version control system <stsp> among open source projects anymore. <stsp> Subversion is seeing widespread use in businesses all around the world <stsp> and it continues to grow in that market. Subversion is still being maintained <stsp> and improved with a focus on business needs. <stsp> Our next release will be Subversion 1.8, and you can read about that release <stsp> here: http://subversion.apache.org/docs/release-notes/1.8.html <stsp> ok, i'm done -- i hope this wasn't too hard to read with the text jumping up a few lines every so often <stsp> any questions? :) <satabdi> stsp, the community guide is really nice, along with that if we have some more information as Gabriela suggested, it would be really nice. <stsp> thanks! i'm glad you like the guide <marina> thanks stsp! <stsp> you're welcome! <marina> looks like there are no more questions, if more show up, you can answer them during the general Q&A <stsp> sure
3.6. General Q&A
<marina> OpenITP presenter is not here yet, so let's move on to the general Q&A now, and we'll switch back to her presentation if she is here soon (and if not she'll mail it in) <marina> so the floor is open to everyone :) <karenesq> ingu1: you had something you wanted to say... <marina> <satabdi> I have a general question addressed to all the presenters. You may answer it later. I am a programmer and a lot of these projects seem very interesting. How do I start contributing to these projects? Are there mentors around like we have in OPW internship projects? <marina> lsblakk, hadess, stsp: you might like to answer this question from satabdi ^ <ingu1> this probably is silly but I wanted to say that even though entry barrier for application development is rather tangled, starting off on simpler tasks such as documentation bugs (That are easier to traverse in terms of files), in my opinion gives confidence to try coding as well. <hadess> marina, satabdi is already doing an opw intership with me on gnome, so i guess the answer's there :) <stsp> we don't have any permanent formal mentor positions. however, we have a few devs who are usually welcoming to new contributors and spend some extra time with them, putting aside other stuff they are working on for a moment <marina> hadess: but others might like to know too :) <karenesq> good point ingu1 <ingu1> I patched libgtk+ to add a new entry to the context menu for fun just the other day…it was difficult at first but since I knew my way around how to look for files (from experience with writing help), I found the file to manipulate eventually. :) <marina> I also wanted to point out that all participating organizations created a list of mentors for the program, whom people can contact any time throughout the year <marina> https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Participating_Organizations <hadess> ingu1, it's also useful to fully utilise what open source offers <ingu1> hadess: yep * jrbaldwin has quit (Leaving.) <hadess> ingu1, if there's an application that does what you want, but does too much, or you can't understand how it works, strip it down to the minimum, and then rebuild it <ingu1> hadess: yep! <hadess> it's like taking an engine apart except with less grease and more git reset to find the screws :) * wow_sig has quit (Leaving) <njerichelimo> marina: thanks for the link! :) <marina> to answer satabdi's question for GNOME, https://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove has many resources for newcomers, including a step-by-step tutorial for creating a patch and uploading it to a bug, and developer documentation tutorials in multiple languages <marina> it also has https://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove/Mentors with 40+ mentors who can be contacted any time * hadess has quit (Remote closed the connection) * priyanka_nag has quit (http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client) <marina> njerichelimo: you are welcome :) * hadess (~hadess@mon69-7-83-155-44-161.fbx.proxad.net) has joined #opw <marina> anyone has more questions? <njerichelimo> on satabdi's question, for deltacloud. The website has short 'guides' on how to get started, working with patches <lsblakk> am around for questions again now if needed * sandraordonez (~sandraord@cpe-98-14-4-14.nyc.res.rr.com) has joined #opw <marina> lsblakk: there was <satabdi> I have a general question addressed to all the presenters. You may answer it later. I am a programmer and a lot of these projects seem very interesting. How do I start contributing to these projects? Are there mentors around like we have in OPW internship projects? <sandraordonez> hi everyone <lsblakk> satabdi: mozilla is working hard to find ways to help people hook in (and stay hooked) so there are and have been many ways <lsblakk> currently there is stuff like http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/ <lsblakk> which helps new contributors find bugs that are marked as mentored <lsblakk> so you can match your interests
3.7. OpenITP Presentation
<marina> hi sandraordonez! let's switch to your presentation about OpenITP! <sandraordonez> hi everyon! * LittleBohemian has quit (Ping timeout: 600 seconds) <sandraordonez> sorry had huge internet problems this morning! <marina> we'll switch back to general Q&A afterit again <marina> sandraordonez: no problem at all! <anteaya> satabdi: openstack presented last week, but for new contributors there is an #openstack-101 channel on freendoe with people to help guide you through your first contribution. #openstack-101 was created by vkmc <sandraordonez> So OpenITP helps developers of circumvention tech projects -open source anti-censorship and anti-sruveillance <vkmc> satabdi, You're welcome to join us :) (thanks anteaya) <sandraordonez> We provide a variety of support: grants, IRL get togethers to facilitate collaboration and brainstorm, and structural support, such our recent internationalization project which helps projects translate their documentation <satabdi> lsblakk, thanks for the link <sandraordonez> in many ways = we provide support in areas where projects may be the weakest…… <satabdi> anteaya, vkmc, thanks <sandraordonez> And its important, for obvious reasons……because making sure these tools are used (and properly) by activists, in some countries, can be a life or death situation <sandraordonez> So in the office we have a small but awesome staff: <sandraordonez> 2 program associates that help with event planning and project management <sandraordonez> A grants manager, who is also a point of reference on how to run open source projects <sandraordonez> a person that runs our Peer Review Board, an initiative which allow for projects to be reviewed for their code/security/etc….as you would in private sector <sandraordonez> and me, someone that helps outreach to the community <sandraordonez> In essence, we are trying to help software/projects be "usable" and not some solution that doesn't bring in input from regular users, and truly answers needs of diverse activists <sandraordonez> thats it :) <marina> thanks sandraordonez! <marina> any questions for sandraordonez? <marina> sandraordonez: earlier there was this question for everyone <satabdi> I have a general question addressed to all the presenters. You may answer it later. I am a programmer and a lot of these projects seem very interesting. How do I start contributing to these projects? Are there mentors around like we have in OPW internship projects? <sandraordonez> there are several ways: a) our goal is to support open source projects, so we can definitely help you find projects w/ instructions on how to contribute to them… * tsabi has quit (http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client) <sandraordonez> b) we have lots of translation work coming up, so we can def add you to that list <sandraordonez> and c) we have an announce list, which will be a good way to keep abreast of any new projects/help needed <sandraordonez> And, we currently have two interns, so we do have internships available
3.8. Getting Involved in a Free Software Project Discussion
<sandraordonez> And if i can add this one point; <sandraordonez> like any OS community, as you are starting off, a lot is just meeting people, and identifying yourself where you see a gap and you can fill <sandraordonez> and being proactive about it * aruna (~chatzilla@117.192.98.73) has joined #opw <marina> sandraordonez: that's a great point! feeling out the needs of a community is a great way to start! * satabdi thanks every one for answering her question <sandraordonez> sometimes i think the reason there are less women in OS, is b/c they are also communities where people generally don't ask for permission to do stuff…they see a problem and take leadership <sandraordonez> (well there are several reasons there aren't that many women in OS) <sandraordonez> but i find, IMHO, that as women, culturally, we are use to asking for permission <sumanah> sandraordonez: can you link to the announcement mailing list? <sandraordonez> So i just tell women just jump in! <sandraordonez> with two feet!! <sandraordonez> sure! getting them now <sumanah> Some people have a learning style where they do much better with high-touch, high-contact, one-on-one guided structured training. https://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/Mentors is a good place to look for projects that offer that, and it links to the specific people you would contact * tsabi (82811297@ircip2.mibbit.com) has joined #opw <satabdi> ingu1, in my case I get bored when I have to read a lot of document before contributing to a project which has quite a big code base... i prefer to play around with the code base and ask questions. <sandraordonez> https://lists.openitp.org/mailman/listinfo/announce * engreen has quit (Remote closed the connection) <marina> sandraordonez: yes! I think it's important that we make our communities more collaborative and offer mentorship, but if anyone is interested in a community that doesn't have that structure in place, don't hesitate - from observing GNOME contributors who just showed up, it takes men up to a year too to lurk around the project and gradually step up their game * salarcon (~steph@ip-66-80-90-109.iad.megapath.net) has joined #opw <ingu1> satabdi: That is true for one comfortable with coding already, newbies like me however required a different approach. <sumanah> Different newbies are different <satabdi> ingu1, even I am a newbie!!!! <sumanah> Some newbies are of a "systematic" style and prefer to read a lot first. Some are "opportunistic" and prefer to rapidly iterate code <ingu1> sumanah: yes aptly put! <sandraordonez> +1 <satabdi> I guess I am more of a person who needs high-contact one-on-one as sumanah mentioned <sumanah> some have a third style involving the use of premade libraries * anteaya realizes she is opportunistic <sumanah> I learned this from the "are your APIs usable?" chapter of Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It http://www.aosabook.org/en/makingsoftware.html * sanjien has quit (Read error: 145 (Connection timed out)) <sandraordonez> OHHH - btw - if there are any spanish speakers, we have an awesome list in spanish <sandraordonez> ping me and I'll ad dyou <sumanah> Also, I wish I had read this Turkle & Papert piece on the bricoleur's programming style 20 years ago - http://papert.org/articles/EpistemologicalPluralism.html " Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete" quote: "Relational thinking puts you at an advantage: You don't suffer disaster if the rule isn't exactly right." it's about a "bricolage" style of programming * tunabananas has quit (Ping timeout: 600 seconds) <marina> at LibrePlanet a couple years ago I hear something that turned into my "aha" moment - during a panel about getting women involved, Erinn Clark from Debian said that women are more collaborative, which is why they prefer to work on their first patch to the project together with someone <sumanah> http://www.einarsen.no/programmer-personality-types-and-why-it-matters-at-all/ might help you understand your style (and the differing styles of your collaborators) <sumanah> https://blogs.msdn.com/b/brada/archive/2003/11/18/50737.aspx?Redirected=true is a bit longer <marina> this really made sense to me and led to us creating the collaborative application process for OPW :) <sandraordonez> Marina +1 <vkmc> marina, +1 <satabdi> marina, +1 <vkmc> marina, I share that feeling, it was easier for me to work with a team that by my own <Deindre> marina: I believe women are very collaborative, but, maybe, more shy. <sumanah> I'm a bit wary of gender essentialism here but I think accommodating different styles is important, in any case :) * sumanah has to head off to a meeting <sandraordonez> If anyone is in NYC, we are working on creating a monthly LIbTech/OS Women get together to discuss some of these issues. Our kick-off event was small, but amazing <marina> sumanah: great point! which is why we should have mentors for everyone :)! <sumanah> good luck, all * sumanah (~sumanah@cpe-74-72-229-171.nyc.res.rr.com) has left #opw <Deindre> marina: I believe women generally need to be more deeply involved than man at the beginning <marina> so the floor is now open to all discussion <marina> both questions to presenters and any topics people would like to discuss <sandraordonez> Well, I would like to ask a question: <sandraordonez> what are the biggest difficulties you face as a young programmer..Or what are the things you have learned that you wish someone had told you <sandraordonez> just curious to see what are some the shared blocks may be <marina> thank you lsblakk, hadess, marios, stsp, and sandraordonez for your excellent presentations!!! and big thank you to karenesq for getting the meeting going!! <karenesq> thank you marina for organizing and leading! <hadess> marina, my pleasure :) <marina> karenesq: glad to! <marios> marina: thanks - was my pleasure. anyone interested in deltacloud please do not hesitate to get in touch. https://deltacloud.apache.org/contact.html <vkmc> sandraordonez, I guess that the most difficult was to get involved with the community: knowing other people, coding style, tools used, code itself <vkmc> sandraordonez, The OPW initiative ease this a lot <sandraordonez> vkmc: VERY Happy to haer <vkmc> sandraordonez, And well, the fear to do something wrong :) <vkmc> sandraordonez, My mentor jpich did a great job on this, she always been really supportive and helped me to go further and think bigger <sandraordonez> well, i think thats why these type of discussions are essential b/c we can remind each other: a) its okay to make mistake b) what you guys are doing is awesome and can be tough <vkmc> Totally yeah <sandraordonez> that is AWESOME to hear vkmc <jpich> :) <marina> sandraordonez: I definitely wish there was more discussion of free software in classes when I was in school, but that was more than 10 years ago <sandraordonez> you guys be fearless, and we will remind you how amazing you are LOL :) <vkmc> :) haha <sandraordonez> marina; agree 100% <marina> sandraordonez: I'm afraid it's equally mysterious to students nowadays though too <sandraordonez> not surprising. I am active also in Joomla (aside from my day job) <njerichelimo> sandraordonez: very important points you've mentioned there! :) <sandraordonez> and i'm always surprised at how difficult entry and collaboration can be at times <sandraordonez> but thats why its really important that once you guys figure it out, you reach out to other women <sandraordonez> and other diverse groups :) Because it totally helps to have that human explanation <vkmc> sandraordonez, +1 <vkmc> I'm already spreading the word with my college mates * priyanka_nag (0e610bc8@ircip1.mibbit.com) has joined #opw <vkmc> Both male and female <sandraordonez> awesome awesome awesome!! <vkmc> I'm also preparing a talk to give them some pointers to start contributing :) <vkmc> I will post about the feedback on that in my blog :) <sandraordonez> Thumbs up!! <marina> vkmc: that's great! once all of you got comfortable with your projects, I think it must be obvious to you how much more is there to do to improve the project and you can totally make these big changes!! <vkmc> marina, Totally, yeah... there are a lot to do and it's really enjoyable <marina> vkmc: yay! :) <vkmc> marina, I found that most communities are willing to improve and every proposal is accepted with great enthusiasm, I love that... and makes me want to keep contributing and being part of it <sandraordonez> vkmc: that is so good to hear! <marina> vkmc: yes, people in open source love to see other people to step up to do things :) <marina> vkmc: with a caveat of course, that it has to be aligned technically or socially with what the community is already doing <marina> ok, I think I'll cut the meeting log here <marina> thanks everyone for a great discussion!! <vkmc> marina, That's for sure yeah, and is a good thing :) <vkmc> Thanks all o/ <Deindre> thanks marina! <sandraordonez> thank you - find us in OpenITP on free node if you need anything at all!! <marina> (feel free to chat in this channel, as usual)