Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:33:51 +0100 From: Eivind Eklund <perhaps@yes.no> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Eivind Eklund <perhaps@yes.no>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, shimon@simon-shapiro.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: X based Free installation Message-ID: <19980114003351.50746@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <19357.884677597@time.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Mon, Jan 12, 1998 at 11:46:37PM -0800 References: <86hg79z7an.fsf@bitbox.follo.net> <19357.884677597@time.cdrom.com>
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On Mon, Jan 12, 1998 at 11:46:37PM -0800, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > There is only one organizational problem with FreeBSD that I see > > clearly today: Responsibility too often boils down to a group of > > people, instead of one person. I think each submission/contact to > > FreeBSD should boil down to the responsibility of _one_ person. > > Yeah, but he's getting kinda busy. ;-) _Each_ submission, not all of them. *grin* > > I previously posted to chat advocating a mentor program which > > basically boiled down to this (people that wanted to contribute could > > mail committers and get a single contact person, who then were > > responsible for their submissions). I got almost no response. > > Not surprising. No infrastructure to support such a program, really, > especially when the mentor/mentoree relationship is so dynamic. Who > takes over the mentorees for a mentor who's leaving or otherwise going > to be indisposed for some period of time? How do they communicate? > How does a mentoree choose a mentor, or vice-versa? These are the > details in which the devil lies, so to speak - the actual "idea" > is trivial. The implementation rather less so. I was thinking of something as simple as: * Mentor chooses mentoree by seeing mentorees e-mail to committers (or if the committers think this is a bad idea, to hackers, or to a mailing-list set up for the purpose) with: `Hi, I'd like a mentor. My interests and skills are roughly as follows, and I'm willing to work on...' * Mentor and mentoree communicate by e-mail, phone, fax, IRC, and/or smoke signals. (Basically, any method that works.) * Everybody without a mentor fall back to the present system. There's no reason why all of this should go away, is there? If necessary, a mentoree can mail and request a new mentor. The above is codified and put into a web page by yours truly, with a suitable prominent link from Newsflash and/or the front page of www.freebsd.org. The web page will also contain a list of what responsibilities the mentor aquires[1] and what is expected of a mentoree (to spend his own time in preference to the mentors, and to follow the basic set of guidelines for material submitted). That's all there is to it, really - and I posted a draft of a web-page with this in it to chat about two months ago. [1] To reply to contacts from the mentoree in a reasonable time. "I don't have time now" and "I don't want to hear about you or anybody in your family ever again" are also replies ;-) Usually, a committer would also either reject or commit the mentorees code, and answer questions that mentoree asks - as long as it isn't obvious that the mentoree is using the mentor in preference to actually reading documentation and trying him/herself. > > Does this mean that I'm the only person that belive this would be > > useful? > > No, I think they're just waiting for you to implement this grand idea > so that they can see you've grasped the subtle distinction between > suggesting from the rear and leading from the front. :-) I actually did what I thought was necessary to make it work quite some time ago, posted it to -chat, and got no response. I'm quite willing to write and commit the necessary documents as long as people (committers/core) think this is something that should be done. (I'll take silence as a 'yes', this time, so now is your chance to protest ;-) Eivind.
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