Revision of Proposed policies, procedures, & solutions from Thu, 06/14/2012 - 07:46
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This wiki page is for drafting polices, procedures, and democratic/management of contributing users. This is NOT official and we are planning to write up a proposal to Rubén Rodríguez to ease his burden and further the project. Rubén Rodríguez is the lead developer and project founder.
Purpose: To develop systems, leadership, and reduce the burden on the lead developer.
Process to achieve this goal
1. Communicate with those interested in participation who have been unable or unwilling to contribute thus far via the Trisquel Forums. Started. Ongoing.
Forum Discussion: What would make you become an associate member?
2. Document skills, interests, and propose policies and procedures to ensure success of the objective here.
Proposals for leadership structure, roles, and responsibilities
Board of people not responsible for day to day organisation/leadership although directs the overall project direction (feedback):
Proposed people for this board: Rubén Rodríguez (quidam), lead developer, Christopher Waid (Chris), ?? who else is a dedicated and or got some involvement long term ??
Council: The people on the council would make coordinated decisions on various aspects of the project. These may or may not be the more minor changes. Team leads would ideally be the liaison to the council and most likely also council members due to the current size of the distribution. Who was on the council could be voted on by associate members.
Proposed council members
[ add your name here and a description of skills, background, etc + contact info at the bottom ]
Team leaders
[ what titles / roles do we need? ]
- lead translator, translator
- [malberts] I'm not an actual translator, but I could take on the role of managing the Drupal side of things or giving general assistance with the translation processes
- lead developer, contributing developer, 'newbie' lead developer (for helping new developers)
- documentation lead (to manage, keep up to date, wean, and document)
- marketing / press relations / artwork lead / active in fund raising (to learn about and write up press releases, seek donations, etc)
- systems admin / web lead (manage the back end, drupal, issue permissions, design backup/restore system, revision control, etc)
- [malberts] I could assist with this too.
Problems brought up on the forum and proposed policy/solutions
Translations
- Wikipage: Website Translations (was started, we need to move forward on this)
- [malberts] I have been holding back because we need some feedback from Rubén. I've marked some things as TODO but some of them are pending some changes to the website/management. Ideally we should get feedback from new translators so we know what kinds of information they need. I've worked with and built a multilingual Drupal website before so it is easy for me to understand the process and I could miss something that a new translator might have trouble with.
- Problem to solve: People start projects, and then leave, abandoned, disorganized, and unmaintainable.
- Proposed policy: Require at least three volunteers before translations can be started (or at least incorporated).
- [SirGrant]: Alternative would be have a certain amount of articles translated and ready to go. For example, if a user had all the front page articles and a decent amount of documentation translated I believe that would display enough investment to warrant adding a language without having 3 translators.
- Proposed solution: Start wiki; Record the languages of volunteers. Once we have three contact volunteers to verify participation.
We should setup a calendar/schedule/roadmap. Even a roadmap that we were not constrained to would make it easier to alert translators and others to upcoming releases and meetings. Automation (send emails) would be even better.
We should contact all the current translators to get an idea of who is still active or not yet listed.
Roadmap
- looks like a roadmap was started here although very out of date; this should probably have info on when Trisquel releases occur. Probably a job for the lead coordinator/manager:
http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/documentation
Issue Tracker
- Forum Discussion: Forum Discussion: Solve bugs on a timeframe depending on the priority
- Problem: (1) Lack of attention and regulation of issue tracker. Some critical freedom bugs are over 2 years old (example 1, example 2). (2) Some issues/bugs reported to the issue tracker are not appropriate and should be reported upstream (example 1, example 2). (3) Lack of development hands.
- Proposed solutions:
- Issue 3: Make it easier for new developers to join in.
- Mentor program: Have a senior member hand-hold a interested person on how to fix simple bugs and become involved in development
- Documentation: Clear up wiki-page on package helpers
- Issue 2: Add a policy (see draft on dev list) for reporting bugs. This would make it easier to close bugs that do not follow the rules and re-direct them elsewhere.
- Issue 1: Attempt to establish a time-frame for certain types of bugs. For example freedom bugs should be solved in a certain time frame. Maybe add another category besides "minor", "normal", and "critical". Maybe one that is "freedom issue" and these bugs take top priority and ideally should be solved ASAP.
- Issue 3: Make it easier for new developers to join in.
Community volunteers
People who have put forth an interest on the forum that they would like to get involved; include contact info and description of skills/time/ability:
used trisquel for one year, was a paid blogger, can translate English to Filipino, does not make much money to support family "You can contact me thru my profile in these forums or my Statusnet account at parlementum.net."
Can translate to Brazillian Portuguese does not work and lives with parents; has minimal coding experience in C, Java, Vala, Python and Haskell; learned from books
Having a formal foundation and organization, with public reports showing where the money goes would get my money.
C/C++/assembly software developer; needs direction in developing for GNU/Linux distributions
computer programmer/software engineer by day (and by night in my spare time) Needs guidance to what needs doing though; willing to spend "some" of my free time working on trisquel. He can "get by" in the web development world even though it is not his main domain "spent some time looking through the trisquel repos, trying to get familiar with how the system work"
I am a systems developer and test engineer. Already volunteering although not jumping in as it could damage the project.
C/C++, Python, Bash scripts, PHP; has touched Drupal although it's been 2 yrs. He has the time although his health is such that he could end up non-communicative at any moment and then possibly back again.
looking for a job, will get membership once employed, proficient in HTML, CSS, PHP and Wordpress, does gtk themeing and working on a Trisquel theme for gtk3, can translate Hindi
knows python- how well? not sure-sounds like not much; couldn't figure out where to start based on tickets; says needs hand holding
Language(s): English only (despite translator badge)
Programming skills: Introductory level java. Will try to learn some bash scripting when I go to visit my dad in a few weeks (he is very good at it).
Availability:Work full time (~40 hours) and go dancing in my spare time. Try to spend a few hours a week contributing to the project. Willing to work on documentation and simple bug fixes.
Other:I have some admin features enabled on my account. I can delete wiki-pages and do things like mark bugs as fixed.
helping doing translations for Italian, knows only a bit of C++, HTML4 and Python although wants to learn/needs some direction; like being given "little works"
Could translate to Portuguese; Knows a little XHTML, CSS and some less in Javascript. Starting to learn C. Needs at least three persons before the translations will start.
User: malberts AKA Morne Alberts
This is a somewhat verbose bio. Feel free to cut out what's unimportant/irrelevant.
Contacting me
- Use the contact form on my profile here.
- Find me on IRC as malberts.
- Ask for my Jabber details.
- I've got an Identica account which I've never used and I don't go there too often: http://identi.ca/malberts
Language Experience
I don't actually speak any of the languages translated here, but here is a short list of my experience with other languages:
- Afrikaans, English (First languages)
I have a general interest in linguistics and languages so I've wet my toes in a few:
- Dutch -- mostly because Afrikaans originates from it. I cannot write in it but I can follow text to some degree.
- Other Germanic languages. I have limited, passive knowledge here but I can often hack an understanding of words due to their ancestral relationship. However, I cannot actually communicate back or write in them. Also, while I can read simple sentences, I cannot yet follow actual texts:
- Norwegian, Swedish, German
- Romance languages. Same as with the Germanic languages, but with even less experience/knowledge:
- Spanish -- I will soon be start to learn it informally, but currently I can pick out a few words and occasionally hack some understanding of a sentence. I intend to actually learn this beyond the level of the Germanic languages I never studied too much.
- French, Italian -- Only a very basic and limited vocabulary.
- Slavic languages:
- I can mostly transliterate the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and pick out a few Russian words, especially if they have cognates in some other language I have experience in, but otherwise I'm useless.
- Other languages:
- No experience
I don't have proper experience with any of the languages used here, but I am not completely out of the water when I am dealing/confronted with another language I have dabbled in before.
Drupal and Web Development
- I worked with Drupal 6 professionally in 2010 and 2011. This includes the standard things like CCK, Views, Panels, Webforms, Ubercart, Organic Groups, Localisation/Internationalisation, Zen theming.
- I started working with Drupal 7 at the end of 2011 and I'm currently working on some 7 things. Again, I've worked with Fields, Views, Panels, Webforms, Commerce, Rules.
- I did a bit more module/PHP hacking (nothing on drupal.org though) with Drupal 6 than with 7. I can do some jQuery and also CSS but I don't design.
- I can manage the LAMP stack at a level at least enough for what's needed for Drupal setups.
GNU/Linux experience
- Ubuntu: 2009 - 2010 (8.10, 9.10)
- I still work with Ubuntu Server when I do Drupal work for some people.
- Trisquel: since 2011 (4.5, 5.0, 5.5)
- Debian 6 for a very limited time in 2011
- For practical purposes I will still call myself a beginner
- Only basic shell scripting
Bug fixing
- Still learning and increasing my understanding of the build environment
- As far programming languages go, I have most experience in PHP and then, in decreasing order, Python, Java, C++. But I have used only PHP for actual work, i.e. Drupal, the others were for fun and university.
Availability
- I'm currently doing Drupal contract work so while I might possibly be on IRC, I cannot actually follow or respond to anything substantial until after work - around 18:00 SAST (UTC +02:00). I might or might not be on IRC over weekends.
- However, if something needs my attention I will try to make time after work or over weekends.
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