On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 12:59 +0200, David Hrbáč wrote:

Jim Perrin napsal(a):

...

The CentOS team is quite small and we're working on this for free. Donations of cash, hardware, and talent are welcome to help improve the project.

Well, I would call this 'marketing talks'. There's whole bunch of people in this list trying to help and even offering the help. So please do not cry the team is small.

I won't comment on that as what I would say is not publicly acceptable.

We have standards that we have to meet to get the packages out the door and testing that must be done.

There is the issue of who gets the private key and how do we get group work time when we have people all over the world.

There is the transfer time of ISOs so that others can review / test them.

Building the packages takes 1-2 days ... testing them, installing them, comparing them to upstream packages, etc ... that takes time.

There's no rule how to became the CentOs developer, as far I have not seen any invitation in lists even. I'm trying to improve/push Centos with every my post.

We are glad you want to help and we encourage it. How to become a member of the CentOS team is to ask.

If you have an open source background (ie, have participated on help site, have worked on an opensource project in the past, etc.). If you want to help, answer questions in the forum, etc.

How not to become a CentOS developer is to call one out on a public mailinglist.

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

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On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 01:47:23PM +0200, David Hrbáč wrote:

...

How not to become a CentOS developer is to call one out on a public mailinglist.

Well I had to write: I did not see any post a new person has joined the dev team in announce list. So pointing the team is small is unfair.

Johnny actually invited me once for the packager team. Unfortunately I had to decline, due to my unreliable time avaliability.

So I have to say that, as far as I noticed, they do keep an eye out to get new people with the necessary background (I had 3+ years experience as a packager for a Linux distribution).

The catch is that packaging for a distribution is much more complex than many people, including the ocasional packager, believe, so there aren't that many pre-qualified candidates. As for people willing to learn the job, well, in that case they have to ask, don't they ?

- -- Rodrigo Barbosa "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)

On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 00:25 +0100, Philip Wyett wrote:

On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 06:17 -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:

...

On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 12:59 +0200, David Hrbáč wrote:

...

Jim Perrin napsal(a):

...

The CentOS team is quite small and we're working on this for free. Donations of cash, hardware, and talent are welcome to help improve the project.

Well, I would call this 'marketing talks'. There's whole bunch of people in this list trying to help and even offering the help. So please do not cry the team is small.

I won't comment on that as what I would say is not publicly acceptable.

We have standards that we have to meet to get the packages out the door and testing that must be done.

There is the issue of who gets the private key and how do we get group work time when we have people all over the world.

There is the transfer time of ISOs so that others can review / test them.

Building the packages takes 1-2 days ... testing them, installing them, comparing them to upstream packages, etc ... that takes time.

...

There's no rule how to became the CentOs developer, as far I have not seen any invitation in lists even. I'm trying to improve/push Centos with every my post.

We are glad you want to help and we encourage it. How to become a member of the CentOS team is to ask.

If you have an open source background (ie, have participated on help site, have worked on an opensource project in the past, etc.). If you want to help, answer questions in the forum, etc.

How not to become a CentOS developer is to call one out on a public mailinglist.

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

As Johnny has stated to help CentOS, you only need to ask.

During the life of 4.3 I mentioned in IRC that I wanted to give CentOS 4.4 a new look unique to CentOS and asked for opinion on my idea. The response was good and after discussion with Johnny, other CentOS devs and other users who lurk in #centos-devel, I went away threw some prototypes together and came back with them. Once folks were happy, I made all the art and code changes and rolled new srpms, tested them and when I was happy submitted them to Johnny. They then fell into the 4.4 beta and went through the normal process described to go into what is now CentOS 4.4.

It's that easy to contribute if you want to.

Regards

Phil

And I would like to thank Phil for the new look ... I like it alot :)

On Fri, 1 Sep 2006, David Hrbáč wrote:

Jim Perrin napsal(a):

...

The CentOS team is quite small and we're working on this for free. Donations of cash, hardware, and talent are welcome to help improve the project.

... There's no rule how to became the CentOs developer, as far I have not seen any invitation in lists even. I'm trying to improve/push Centos with every my post.

I am a bit late into the discussion, but would shed a bit of light on rules and invitations.

There are many ways that centos is 'developed' (as a rebuild effort, some but not all of the distribution integration effort, is pre-ordained -- base and updates package selections vary from the upstream by and large only as to trademark elidement and insertion, and updater decisions.) Other places allow for creativity. A guiding principle is: be a strict and reliabile rebuild, timely built, striving for stability first, and added features later, if at all.

Some roles lend themselves to delegation: communication efforts (mailing list, IRC, forum, wiki, advocacy), testing (candidates in the testing archive, bugtracker confirmation and traige), and so forth. Other roles do not - rolling releases and 'official updates' signed with an official centos key, infrastructure such as mirror list maintenance or security matters, web editorial.

The project's needs are assessed, and available 'talent' and prominent contributors to the project are noted, discussed, and evaluated on a continuing and continuous basis, by the centos core team 'behind the scenes.' A few months ago, as a result of that approach, Jim Perrin was invited to additional public responsibilities for the project; more recently the planned EOL and transition of Tao into CentOS, and the addition of David Parsley occured. Different people, different skills, but both now part of the core team. Friendly collaborations with other FOSS projects are part of Centos' history and a source of its strength.

Each of the core team are active in the project, have their eyes open, and know who the 'prospects' are, from direct interaction or published reputation.

So, there _is_ no one 'rule' which one might meet to then demand admission; rather the project is a self-perpetuating meritocracy of like-minded people _invited_ and choosing to volunteer increasing amounts of their time for the betterment of the project, at increasing levels of responsibility, when they have demonstrated a competence relevant to a given role.

Want to be a part? you're invited. The quickest routes I can think of to be invited to assume _more_ responsibility for the project is to _do_ more; test, participate, be thoughtful and present and accurate.

The 'entry gateways' are the self-serve account signup routes; Write reproducable case bug reports when you see a flaw and propose the fix; weed and confirm existing reports; document in the forum or the wiki usage cases and solutions for the topics which recur over and over again in the mailing lists or in the IRC channels; 'staff' the mailing list and IRC with good counsel to explain and instruct to answer a tough question. File reports and push fixes in upstream, not just up one level, but all the way back up to the underlying wells of projects from which the FOSS community drinks. We'll notice.

-- Russ Herrold

ps - Think you have what it takes? Want to do more, but you are shy? If anyone reading this wants to test their mettle out of the glare of a public participation, but needs a project suggestion or facilitating resources for a project on behalf of centos, contact me off list and we'll come to a specification together to mentor you on, at a complexity level suited to your skillset. I have an ample backlog of wishlist tasks on behalf of centos. Some participants have picked up on suggestions I have described from time to time in the IRC channel from time to time, and some really nice work _and_ some personal skillset growth in the implementor has resulted from it.

- r