[squeak-dev] Re: Call For *Your* Opinion

Josh Gargus josh at schwa.ca
Mon May 3 18:31:57 UTC 2010


On May 1, 2010, at 3:39 AM, Ian Trudel wrote:

> (Repost of the survey is available below this message)
> 
> This is most likely the last call for this survey as the number of
> contributions to it have drastically decreased. I have seen many on
> the list who haven't participated yet and I'd be glad to hear from
> you. Or do I have to email everyone personally? ;)))
> 
> I will compile data around May, 10th and a report will be eventually written.
> 
> Ian.
> --
> http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
> 
> = Survey ======
> 
> 1. What are your biggest hurdles preventing you from contributing to Squeak?

Free time, and more interest in building things on top of Squeak than going through Mantis and clearing out existing bugs.


> 2. What would it take for you to contribute more?

The current process is fine for me.


> 3. What are your expectations in regard to contributions?

Compared to other open-source projects, I think that Squeak contributions should have more of a focus on simplicity (vs. fancy code), and on documentation.  This is because of the broad scope of Squeak.  People who aren't experts in a particular domain or Squeak subsystem may wander into unfamiliar code.  In a typical C-based open-source project, people don't just accidentally find themselves hacking the source-code of a new project.  Also, once they commit to contributing to a particular project, the narrower scope of most projects mean that there is less to become familiar with.  

In other words, one of Squeak's greatest strengths is easy access to the code of the entire system, and the advantage we derive from this depends on how easy the code is to understand and modify; we can make things easier by emphasizing simplicity and documentation.


> 4. What are the reasons behind the low level of contributions from
> other community members, according to you?

I haven't seen any evidence that our contribution level is low compared to other open-source projects, relative to our community size.  


> 5. What would you improve in order to increase the number of
> contributions and the number of contributors?

Improve documentation so that more people who glance at Squeak decide to stick around.


> 6. How would you rate your sense of social identification to the
> Squeak community, on a scale from 1 to 10. (1 is the lowest, 10 the
> highest)

9


> 7. What is your rating based on?
> 

On my feeling of social identification with the Squeak community :-) 

Not sure what else to say...


> 8. Anything else?

Nope.

Cheers,
Josh





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