Greetings Technology PMC,
I've been thinking a lot about the review process that we've started.
Part of that thinking has been concerned with building some kind of
checklist for the review. I'd like to avoid a sort of "you must do
these things" list, but rather have something of a guideline for our
projects to follow to make sure that they're doing the right sorts of
things.
I've already captured some of this in other forums, but thought it
would be a good idea to try and start capturing them more formally.
Ultimately, this probably belongs on the project website.
--
There is a set of things that a project should do to at least make it
easier for folks to find out about them ("don't turn away your
community"):
Project website:
- Must have a clear and concise description of the project. Get
help to determine whether or not the description is indeed clear and
concise.
- Must have a link to the project info page.
- Must have a reasonable appearance. Make sure the page is
rendering properly in (minimally) Firefox and IE. Make sure that the
page, for example, isn't missing </div> tags.
- Should include links to articles, blogs, newsgroups, mailing
lists, bug lists, and other sources of information about the project.
- Must provide link for help (e.g. link to a newsgroup)
- Should include a link to the project proposal, plan, IP log, etc.
- Should include a short presentation that describes the project in
a "source" format (i.e. a PPT or ODP file) in addition to a portable
format such as PDF.
- May include a list of the project committers, and mentors.
- Should include one or more Team Project Sets or equivalent to
make it easy for interested parties to load the code into a local
workspace. For more complex configurations, considering using
Buckminster.
Project info page:
- Must have a clear and concise description of the project.
- Must contain as much information as possible about the project.
Fill in as much detail as possible on the portal so that an interested
party can find newsgroups, mailing lists, project plans, IP logs, etc.
Other things:
- Should have at least one Architecture Council mentor. Projects
that predate this requirement should find a mentor anyway.
- Must have a publicly documented end-game.
- Must provide timely responses to questions posed in the project
newsgroups and mailing lists.
- Should blog regularly
- Should aggregate project-related blogs on Planet Eclipse and
other (possibly domain-specific) blog aggregators.
- Should have code.
- Should be making regular code contributions.
- Must be inclusive and responsive to community feedback. Input and
patches contributed by the community should be given due consideration;
ideas from the community should be integrated into the project.
- Should be diverse. Projects should work to attract committers
from the community
- Must seek out and exploit forums (such as tradeshows,
conferences, webinars, etc.) that provide opportunities to develop
community.
Signs of success:
Ultimately, everything above is about making it possible for a
community to find out about your project and provide opportunity to get
involved. Providing that opportunity is one thing, actually attracting
a community is another.
You are successful if (not an exclusive list):
- A significant number of bugs raised against your project come
from non-committers.
- Non-committers are blogging about your project.
- Articles, presentations, podcasts, webinars, etc. are being
developed and presented by non-committers.
- You cease to be the center of the universe for your project.
--
These are my initial thoughts. It's rough and I have almost certainly
left out lots of stuff.
Any thoughts/additions/subtractions?
Wayne
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