Re: RFC: Organizational Changes – Engineering Service

Max Spevack mspevack at redhat.com
Sat Feb 6 17:36:04 UTC 2010


> The obvious flaw here is “will people volunteer?” I think they would. 
> I know I will.
>
> Thought / comments?

I think that the idea is great.  There's always a need for people who 
can just generally "get stuff done" to help move initiatives that touch 
various parts of Fedora along, and this team could help to organize and 
direct that group.

Here's what I'm already starting to wonder:

We've talked on and off over the years about managing the idea of 
"weekend hacks" and finding a way to let people who have lots of skill, 
but little to no experience applying that skill directly to Fedora, to 
get involved.

To me, the most difficult managerial task involved in this idea will be 
to properly spec out tasks or projects.  "Show me a list of all projects 
that are projected to take X hours, have a deadline of $TIMEFRAME, and 
require someone with $SKILL."

Look at the thread from earlier this week that Matt started about taking 
a block of time and fixing up all the map generation.  That to me is a 
perfect task for a team like the one Mike is describing.

How would that work be spec'd out, so that people could not only know 
that the work needs to be done, but also volunteer?

How can we use *some* of these tasks to be an easy way for someone to 
make an immediate positive contribution to Fedora, without having to 
learn a whole bunch of stuff first?

--Max


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