[Adonthell-general] Getting contributors (was Re: Kudos on [Adonthell-Devel])

[Kai Sterker]

On Jan 15, 2008 5:41 AM, Alexandre Courbot <address@hidden> wrote:

> I think the project is going to stay more or less idle as long as
> there is no active team. Kai has been the initiator and enlightened
> leader since the beginning, and as long as he's around the project
> cannot be considered dead or stopped. But my feeling is that he has to
> rise new contributing forces again, since the old ones are kind of...
> out of service.

Here's the problem :-). It's not as easy as it sounds. Although I have
to admit that I haven't invested too much energy into actively
advertising open positions. Most time was spent on making sure that
stuff is documented, on the road map and task descriptions.

So far, we have job-offerings up on Savannah, BerliOS and the Linux Game Tome:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/people/?group_id=702
http://devcounter.berlios.de/req_show.php?reqid=88
http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2473
Also, most news items on our website also state that help is most
welcome, as does the Wiki.

All of those have in common though, that they are not really visible
unless you go out and search for them. At least on our website and the
Wiki, we could make them more prominent. Put up a big colored box on
the front page or something.


> Compared to a couple of years ago, it seems obvious to me that there
> are more potential contributors wandering on the internet, the only
> thing we need is to get them to see the project. That is, give the
> project more visibility. We have a complete demo of our past work,
> Waste's Edge, and some experimental bits of the new version. The
> source code is clean. Docs are written, more than we never had. It
> should be easier for newcomers to join the project

One should think so, but perhaps it has grown to a size where it's no
longer easy to just start contributing. It takes some time and effort
to read the docs, look at API and code, etc.

Maybe there are other factors too, like the age of the project, the
seemingly large number of project members (15!) registered at
Savannah, my arrogance, you name it ...


> Life (and... end of university, mainly ;)) has gotten us more or less
> out of the project. Kai, don't you think it's time to invite some
> students in their late 10th/early 20th who have talent and are dying
> to contribute to something that will be visible?

Heh! Sure :-). That would be exactly what we need. Any suggestions how
to attract them?

Back then a number of people came on board after seeing the v0.1 or
v0.2 release. It didn't happen with v0.3 and not with v0.4 alpha. Why?


> How many thousand
> downloads for Waste's Edge? How many distributions include it? This is
> enough to convince people with talent to join us, and you did not even
> have that when you started the project, but still managed to get a
> solid team around the project for Waste's Edge. So, today it should be
> easier to get contributors - we just have to call them!

There are two things on my mind right now:

* The Linux Game Tome game of the month:
  http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=21
* Google Summer of Code (although I'm not sure if they do something
like that in 08):
  http://code.google.com/soc/2007/

Any other suggestions more then welcome!

Kai