[sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list

[Morgan Collett]

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 15:23, Morgan Collett <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:47, Morgan Collett <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien <bastienguerry at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for
>>> all Sugar activities?  Even just the email address from the git repo
>>> would be nice.
>>
>> I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list
>> specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by
>> all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would
>> hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least
>> notice mails which are important to them.
>>
>> Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is
>> going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and
>> many others.
>>
>> There are a bunch of issues I'm aware of which need to be communicated
>> clearly and widely:
>>
>> * A lot of activities need updating. There are a good number of us who
>> can help, if we can get the attention of the original / most recent
>> maintainers/authors. We would be willing to do new releases, and we
>> will do so (technically forking) without their help if we don't get
>> their attention.
>>
>> * There is a new activity updater in the control panel in joyride.
>> There is a certain procedure to provide specific versions of the
>> activity for specific builds, so that (future) stable builds get a
>> certain version available, whereas development builds can get other
>> versions of the activity. The exact procedures around that need to be
>> communicated, in such a way that a significant number of activity
>> developers *do* them.
>>
>> * It would be great to have a specific procedure for someone to say "I
>> developed this activity, I don't have time to maintain it against
>> future releases, it's available for someone to take over". I suspect
>> several interesting activities are in this position.
>>
>> * We need a way to communicate API changes, new resources, etc to
>> activity developers without this getting lost in the "noise" of the
>> existing lists. We need a way to get clear feedback on these without
>> getting swamped by non activity developers.
>>
>> * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to
>> speed without having to wade through information they don't need.
>>
>> I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really
>> think we need this list.
>>
>> I know it's yet another mailing list, but I think it will help make
>> our communication more focussed and effective.
>>
>> I'm adding this to the agenda of today's (tonight's for me) Sugar
>> development meeting. Please comment here in advance of the meeting, or
>> come to the meeting for a more immediate discussion.
>>
>> Morgan
>>
>
> We didn't get to discuss this activity developers' mailing list at the
> Sugar meetings. However I've had no negative feedback. If anyone is
> opposed to this list, please speak up quickly and loudly. Otherwise I
> will get it created in the next week, publicize it and invite all
> known activity developers whose email addresses I can track down to
> subscribe.
>
> My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or
> @lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by
> default.
>
> Regards
> Morgan

I'm surveying activity developers of non-current activities - I
tracked down email addresses from git logs and past posts to mailing
lists.

I'll send out a report once I get a significant number of responses.

It does seem like we should address the sugar list moving over to
sugarlabs.org first before considering other changes.

Regards
Morgan