Wanna start contributing code? Ask your question here

57 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
SalmanMohammadi
Offline
Beigetreten: 02/23/2012

> i notice you say you have left "the project" - are you saying you are no longer a trisquel developer?
I was a Trisquel contributor but not anymore.

> so as it would seem there is a large barrier to entry for anyone new wanting to help out with trisquel.
Currently the largest barrier is Ruben (the project leader ad founder). Trisquel is his own project and he can do whatever he likes with his own project. I have no objection about it.

> what does this mean for newcomers - will you still be watching this thread and mentoring?
Yeah, I'm here to help new contributors.

> who are the active maintainers now?
https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/commits/flidas

> is there any project co-ordination (e.g. meetings or task assignments) or is trisquel a sort of loose adhocracy such as parabola?
There were some sessions on IRC in the past. IDK what happened to them.

> the only documented progress or road-map i see is this wiki article - yes? --> https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/flidas-release-issues
Ruben likes to do everything by himself. I created that page but I don't know if Ruben used that or not.

> the only other developer-centric documentation i can find is this, which is VERY thin --> https://trisqueldev.salcomputing.com/ - perhaps completing that document would be a good place to start.

I have written that, you can contribute, https://framagit.org/salman/trisqueldev/tree/master .

bill-auger
Offline
Beigetreten: 09/01/2015

SalmanMohammadi

i appreciate that you are taking the time to be helpful here but i must say that your response was not very encouraging

i read it as essentially:

* there were some co-ordination meetings in the past but not anymore
* there is a road-map but the sole maintainer does not refer to it because "he does whatever he wants"
* it would be hard to convince anyone that there is more than one contributor judging by the commit history you linked to - that does not at all indicate a community effort

then you say that i can help you write the documentation for new maintainers - but no - i can not because i do not know what being a trisquel maintainer entails - that would be precisely the purpose of such a document if it existed - so that i could learn how to be a trisquel maintainer

i asked ruben a few days ago how i could help and he said to do some beta-testing of the obscure features in the release candidate, vaguely such as "accessibility", "languages", and "input methods" - surely more tasks are required to maintain an operating system than only beta-testing and surely one single person can not maintain an operating system alone - the more i look into it i am baffled that such an important distro has so few people working on it

so what place is there for potential new contributors? - i am more interested in that question as it relates to the future of trisquel than any specific task i myself can do today - for example new contributors would want to know:

* "where would i start?"
* "which are the most urgent tasks"
* "who is working on which task?"
* "how would i report my results?"
* "if i work on something - will it ever see the light of day?"

even the "where would i start?" question is very important noting that even this forum is closed for membership

i would like to help but i would hardly even know where to start with beta-testing, nor where to document my results, nor if anyone would take notice of my efforts - there really needs to be some co-ordination of the community efforts at least as an indicator that they are welcome and will not go unnoticed - or else it seems like there is nothing that anyone can do (not even beta-testing) that would help in a meaningful way

Lightmoon

I am a member!

Offline
Beigetreten: 12/16/2013

I'm agree.

Trisquel is an important distro, I was surprise when I knew that Trisquel only has one Hacker. This idea is opposed to the idea of a community and free software.
I'm programmer, and I would like to contribute to Trisquel, but I'm feeling bad, because I can not do anything. I need to study how can I help in the project, but documentation is insufficient. I've never do the job to maintener a package in a distro, but I would love to do it. It would be an honor to be a hacker in Trisquel project, but I don't know how to start. In this case, it would be good that Rubén open the project to the community.

Soon.to.be.Free
Offline
Beigetreten: 07/03/2016

I agree with you entirely here, but it's important to note that having only one developer in a project is not opposed to the ideas of free software. Of course, a thriving community is in all likelihood better for a project (and its freedom), but an inability to contribute to a project doesn't necessarily mean the users are powerless- they always have the right to fork should they feel it necessary, even if that's not the ideal.

bill-auger
Offline
Beigetreten: 09/01/2015

clearly though, if the main problem is the lack of maintainers and tech support then forking is not a solution - the redundant parallel effort and smaller user-base would be counter-productive

let me tell you what has spurred me the most into raising this issue

as i see it, the target audience of trisquel is casual non-technical desktop users who are interested in using a libre OS (e.g. former ubuntu and mint users) and i see trisquel as the main entry point for curious folks who are new to the wider free software community - for that reason, trisquel should be extremely well supported and welcoming for that user-base - i am referring much less to the software itself but more importantly to having experienced people on the IRC and on this forum saying "hello" and answering noob questions - this is extremely important for newcomers to feel that they are welcomed and can rely on the community if they need help - i invite you as an experiment to go into #trisquel on freenode and type "i tried installing trisquel but my screen is all black - please help me!!" and see if anyone can help you - i think you will find that most newcomers into the IRC channel go completely un-noticed - so IMHO trisquel's main problem is not the maintenance of the software but a general lack of community participation - perhpas they are related but to say that simply having more maintainers is not the entire solution - and certainly forking is worse

lately i have been seeing inexperienced users asking the most basic support questions in the parabola IRC channel - this is not as much a fault with trisquel as the many people saying that parabola is more up-to-date and perpetuating the myth that newer => better - this has been the case so often that i decided last week to write an article for the parabola wiki hoping to convince people that an LTS distro like trisquel is a better choice for most computer users - feel free to use it if you like - the topic comes up often

https://wiki.parabola.nu/Rolling_vs._LTS

in fact, i have seen over the past year, the relative number of users in #trisquel and #parabola on freenode go from roughly twice as many in #trisquel to now half as many - this really should not be happening - trisquel really should be quite more popular than parabola - i see this as a sign that something is wrong

an arch system is clearly less than ideal for these folks but i fully understand why they are switching - the fact is that parabola is much better supported than trisquel mainly because parabola users are generally quite tech-savy and the parabola maintainers actually spend time in the IRC channel themselves

honestly, i do feel as if i was disingenuous in recommending trisquel in that wiki article because, in reality, if a non-technical computer user asks me which GNU/linux distro to use i would, without hesitation, recommend debian and show them how to join the #debian IRC channel for help - i could not in good concience make such a confident suggestion of trisquel - and this makes me sad

Mangy Dog

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Offline
Beigetreten: 03/15/2015

bill-auger

I want to thank you for raising questions (and in fact not getting most of the answers you want)

From your github account you are someone of experience, a develloper and you have even made a LiveCD version of Puppy Linux for education purposes (?)[correct me if i'm wrong]..

No need to fork Trisquel, there's is a respin which is great
https://urukproject.org/dist/en.html

We have a hard"core"of experienced users who spend a lot their (personal) time answering to non-tecnical users,on the Forum one of which is Magic Banana.The irc has a lot of online peolpe but not that many discussions in comparaison to a Debian channel (but is a comparaison possible?).

What's missing ?
A team whith a wisdom stick ;-) or a whip ,who knows?

ADFENO
Offline
Beigetreten: 12/31/2012

I guess that IRC is for more informal meetings, and not necessarely a
support place. Although new comers do visit it sometimes. IRC is also
good for scheduled "follow-along" support requests.

Forums and mailing lists, in the contrary, are suitable for support,
because the request doesn't get lost overtime.

--
- [[https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno]]
- Palestrante e consultor sobre /software/ livre (não confundir com
gratis).
- "WhatsApp"? Ele não é livre, por isso não uso. Iguais a ele prefiro
GNU Ring, ou Tox. Quer outras formas de contato? Adicione o vCard
que está no endereço acima aos teus contatos.
- Pretende me enviar arquivos .doc, .ppt, .cdr, ou .mp3? OK, eu
aceito, mas não repasso. Entrego apenas em formatos favoráveis ao
/software/ livre. Favor entrar em contato em caso de dúvida.