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