[Incubator] Attracting Developers

[Jody Garnett]

We experimented with the idea of an unsupported module in GeoTools. The idea was successful and was adopted as a community module for GeoServer.

It allows a person new to open source to get their feet wet with out being subject to the full QA process. There code is versioned with the library, but not actually included In the release until they are ready to take on QA and docs.

They do obtain commit access, and thus are in position to help fix any other bugs in the library. 

We originally came up with the idea to hold on to experiments from the user list, after we watched the same work repeating each year. By inviting participation, at the very least the community had some code after time spent answering questions ( and the code was available to debug if someone had time to help ).

The other thing is get on github. You won't get committers right away, but you will get contributions, and a sense of who is forking your project ( and why ). If you are especially keen you can review your patch and contribution policies and update them to allow pull requests. 

Jody



--
Jody Garnett

On 12/07/2013, at 11:34 PM, "Adkins, Dustan" <dadkins at ball.com> wrote:

> Does anyone have success stories they would like to share about
> attracting developers?
> This seems to be a sticking point for some projects (including Opticks),
> and I would appreciate any insight the folks here have gathered over the
> years.
> 
> Thanks,
> Dustan
> 
> 
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