Post on 04-Feb-2015
description
OSS Watch, Oxford 9 Oct 2009
Life of a Wookie
Scott Wilson (University of Bolton)
Scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.com
Twitter: scottbw
Open Source & Community
• What I’ll talk about:– What Wookie is…– Why community matters to our work– How we support community– What the barriers are, and how we
overcome them– What problems we’ve faced, and how we
tackled them.
Why community mattersto an OSS project
Open source communities…
• No community: dead code• Geek High Priesthood: open source, closed
community• Lots of Developers, No users: unfriendly geek
tool shed• Lots of Users, No developers: abandonware• User and Developers: Yay!
Apache Wookie (incubating)
• Entered incubator July ‘09 • originally developed in Framework 6 IP
– Funded projects tend to build prototypes, not communities
• http://incubator.apache.org/wookie/• W3C Widget Engine
– W3C Packaging and Configuration– W3C Widget Object– Google Wave Gadget API
Why the foundation route?
• Mechanisms to support community• Clear processes and governance, already
trusted by developers• Clear licensing and legal framework,
removing barriers to adoption
These are all things a viable OSS project needs - but are hard to set up and run alone
Community in Wookie
This is how I see our community - and one of my tasks is to make sure there is a steady supply of people moving through these stages
To be viable, Wookie needs more variety here
Developers aren’t lawyers
• But you wouldn’t know it sometimes…
overcoming the barriers
• From the OSS project:– Documenting and explaining processes– Actively reaching out to developers to help them over
the barrier
• From the external team:– Understanding tracker-based workflows– Understanding distributed development
It can be surprising how many developers (still) don’t have issue tracker and source control experience
Being nice is a survival strategy in OSS
Cases
• LAMS: integration
• HUT: bugfix
• UPD/EPFL/TG: feature spec
Problems we’ve faced
• Developers reluctant to tackle IP & licensing issues why do I need to sign this? Can I be bovvered?
• Developers inexperienced with issue trackers• Developers not understanding workflows do I
submit the patch or create an issue first?• Managers worried about what their
developers may be getting them into what’s our exposure? What are we committing ourselves to? What if I need you for xyz…
How are we doing?
• Even with active support, you don’t get everyone over the barriers (even in our own organisation)
• A long way to go yet…• A good range of developers engaged, slowly
moving up the ladder• A lot of new project proposals (FP7, JISC…)
want to use Wookie, so more developers likely coming into the picture
Why its worth it:
• External contributions help fix bugs, add features, identify user requirements
• More people tends to bring more diversity of markets where the software can be applied
• Contributing to open source projects helps developers gain important professional skills
• Working with open source projects provides opportunities for new partnership
Get involved!
• Send subscribe message to wookie-dev-subscribe@incubator.apache.org
• Submit issue reports, feature requests, patches: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WOOKIE
• Come to Apache/CETIS Widgets Meetup, London, 13th Octoberhttp://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Widgetmeetup_Oct09