Atul posted the mail as a prelude to the much awaited CfP. And, I’d say that it is going to become a much forwarded and much discussed mail. It is meant to be that. Discussion is good. Results are much better.
It is somewhat difficult for an event to re-invent itself and yet keep the focus on the underlying theme – “Talk is Cheap, Show Me the Code“. It takes introspection, it takes ambition and it takes faith. So, this time around the focus is clear enough – no content that is aimed at newbies (which was there last time around as well) and a strong focus on getting things done. To that extent, I’d hazard a guess that the selection of submissions would go through a fine tooth comb to see if they are actually about approaches to solving a defined problem. It is not going to be a “look at me and my project and ain’t I cool” talk again. And, to augment the need to sit down and “work” there are Project of the Day and FOSS Workouts.
Effective this year, FOSS.IN will focus on developers, and results. It
will highlight credible efforts by people in India contributing to FOSS,
and will bring together developers at peer level, to allow them to
interact, discuss, develop and deliver.“Delivery” does not mean mere bug fixing. Delivery will be new features to
existing applications, completely new subsystems (e.g. file systems,
device drivers, etc.), (re)design of systems and applications, etc.
But of course this doesn’t rule out why folks come to events – to meet other people, get familiar, discuss a niggling issue and have loads of debugging sessions and debates.
FOSS.IN is supposed to be a meeting ground for existing and potential FOSS
contributors, so that they can put faces to IRC nicks, discuss, interact,
collaborate, plan, debug, etc. all through the event.We want people to come to FOSS.IN with definite goals in mind, and fulfil
them at the event. Whether it is improving an existing project, launching
a new one, brainstorming with your peers, with international participants,
etc. We want to see high-intensity FOSS contribution happening, or being
seeded, in the 750 seater hall, the corridors, the BOF tents, the lawns,
the lobbies, etc.
It is going to be a different event. It is going to make you think. It is aimed at making you do things. It is thought out to be a new experience.
Don’t say you weren’t forewarned.
Hat’s off to Foss Team
Just this snippet makes me bit unhappy,
— In foss-in@yahoogroups.com, Atul Chitnis wrote:
[..]
> And the bottom line is that while there was a measureable increase in
> people getting involved in FOSS contribution, the quality left a lot to be
> desired. Most new contributors focused only on low hanging fruit, such as
> translations, and distro-specific packaging. If people got involved with
> code, it was usually bug fixes and code maintenance.
>
It was too harsh remark in my view calling translations and distro specific packaging a low hanging fruit.
It is all relative. Even calling contributions to a specific project where coding is also very straight forward can be called as low hanging fruit.
For example maintaining httpd server, emacs, gtk is not easy job. Packaging involves very very complex tasks sometime. But then there are very easy packages also.
Similar is the case with translations or code contributions.
So, all in all it is very relative.
What say?
Being a new developer to the project CHDK(Canon Hack Development Kit), it would surely make me think to submit my topic to the foss.in team. I had made 2 patches of which, one of them is submitted and will enter the trunk as soon as possible(thats what the developer told me!!!) and the other patch is yet to be submitted. Anyway this time I cannot see any newbies. But fortunately I am planning to conduct a BOF and of-course hack my cam, add more and more features and fix more bugs, with the limited time I have!!!
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. 🙂 Cheers! Sandra. R.