Re: how do we go about promoting new clojure libraries?

[Stuart Sierra]

http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Libraries is unorganized and out of date - volunteers welcome.

James Reeves created http://www.clojure-toolbox.com/

-S

[Mayank Jain]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:31 AM, Stuart Sierra <the.stua...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Libraries is unorganized and out of date - volunteers welcome.

I am interested in keeping the clojure libraries up to date. Can you give me some ideas what are the tasks that needs to be done? So that I have some idea about it.

Thanks.
 

James Reeves created http://www.clojure-toolbox.com/

-S

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[Stuart Sierra]

On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:05:08 PM UTC-4, Mayank Jain wrote:

I am interested in keeping the clojure libraries up to date. Can you give me some ideas what are the tasks that needs to be done? So that I have some idea about it.

1. Send in a signed Clojure Contributor Agreement: http://clojure.org/contributing

2. You will receive an editor account on http://dev.clojure.org/

3. Start editing!

Thanks!
-S

[Mayank Jain]

@Stuart
Thanks. But it says "Send your signed agreement via postal mail to:"
Do I need to send it via postal mail? (I stay in India)

[Michael Klishin]

2012/9/26 Mayank Jain <fires...@gmail.com>

Thanks. But it says "Send your signed agreement via postal mail to:"
Do I need to send it via postal mail? (I stay in India)

Unfortunately, yes. Clojure uses a fine crafted 16th century contributor agreement process that does not

take into account that there may be potential contributors outside of North America and western Europe.

Please cast your vote in https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/clojure/evolving$20the$20clojure/clojure/GnfAK6beMN8/DiMIbvYWhVkJ

so it can be replaced with something that makes sense in the year 2012.
--
MK

[Michael Klishin]

2012/9/26 Stuart Sierra <the.stua...@gmail.com>

http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Libraries is unorganized and out of date - volunteers welcome.

Stuart,

No, that's not how it works. You *first* make contribution process easy, *then* ask people to volunteer.

Not the other way around, no.
--
MK

http://github.com/michaelklishin
http://twitter.com/michaelklishin

[Baishampayan Ghose]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Michael Klishin
<michael....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, yes. Clojure uses a fine crafted 16th century contributor
> agreement process that does not
> take into account that there may be potential contributors outside of North
> America and western Europe.
>
> Please cast your vote in
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/clojure/evolving$20the$20clojure/clojure/GnfAK6beMN8/DiMIbvYWhVkJ
>
> so it can be replaced with something that makes sense in the year 2012.

Michael,

IMHO it's not that archaic. There are _many_ FOSS projects which
mandate a CLA of some sort (even the hippest projects like Node.js
have this http://nodejs.org/cla.html). The only contention is the
snail-mailing part, which I understand is cumbersome.

Chef guys have opted to use Echosign for the signing purpose
(http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/How+to+Contribute) and I think
it's a decent compromise.

Regards,
BG

--
Baishampayan Ghose
b.ghose at gmail.com

[Baishampayan Ghose]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Michael Klishin
<michael....@gmail.com> wrote:
> No, that's not how it works. You *first* make contribution process easy,
> *then* ask people to volunteer.

Michael,

Don't want to sound snarky here, but as we all know, easy != simple :)

[Michael Klishin]

2012/9/26 Baishampayan Ghose <b.g...@gmail.com>

IMHO it's not that archaic. There are _many_ FOSS projects which
mandate a CLA of some sort (even the hippest projects like Node.js
have this http://nodejs.org/cla.html). The only contention is the
snail-mailing part, which I understand is cumbersome.

Chef guys have opted to use Echosign for the signing purpose
(http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/How+to+Contribute) and I think
it's a decent compromise.

I am only talking about the snail mail part. I have no problem with CAs, legal aspects of

OSS project governance or anything like that.

It took me a few hours to pass through the Neo4J contributor agreement process. That's how

it should work.

[Baishampayan Ghose]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 12:44 PM, Michael Klishin
<michael....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am only talking about the snail mail part. I have no problem with CAs,
> legal aspects of
> OSS project governance or anything like that.
>
> It took me a few hours to pass through the Neo4J contributor agreement
> process. That's how
> it should work.

Fair enough. I agree that some way of signing the CA electronically
will be of immense help.

[John Gabriele]

On Sunday, September 23, 2012 4:00:28 PM UTC-4, zcaudate wrote:

is there some sort of categorised list/wiki that we can add to for new libraries?

I've started the [Clojure Dining Car](http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/clojure/dining-car.html), but haven't announced it yet because I still need a good picture of a dining car to use on that page. :)

---John

[Aaron Cohen]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Michael Klishin
<michael....@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/9/26 Stuart Sierra <the.stua...@gmail.com>
>>
>> http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Libraries is unorganized and out
>> of date - volunteers welcome.
>
>
> Stuart,
>
> No, that's not how it works. You *first* make contribution process easy,
> *then* ask people to volunteer.
>
> Not the other way around, no.
> --

No, only if you want an unfiltered stream of absolutely anyone to
contribute is that true. If you're ok with restricting volunteers to
the subset who are actually willing show a little effort, making the
process slightly cumbersome might even be a net benefit.

--Aaron

[Michael Klishin]

zcaudate:

is there some sort of categorised list/wiki that we can add to for new libraries?

There are clojuresphere.com, clojure-toolbox.com and some groups of people have their

own sites for their stuff: clojurewerkz.org, http://flatland.org.

If you want to make your library more visible, post release announcements to the mailing list,

create a blog for announcements, get it added to planet.clojure.in and maybe have a twitter

account for folks who prefer twitter to rss aggregators.

Simply putting your library's name on a wiki somewhere does not make it visible, unfortunately.

Periodically "making noise" with announcements makes people notice it and, hopefully, recall

it later when they need your library.

MK 

[Tamreen Khan]

I think the consensus is that an electronic way to send the CA is just
the right amount of effort required. You stil have to take the time to
fill out a legally binding agreement but it also doesn't rule out
those for whom snail mail is just too unpractical because they live
outside the US or Europe, for example

[Michael Klishin]

2012/9/26 Aaron Cohen <aa...@assonance.org>

No, only if you want an unfiltered stream of absolutely anyone to
contribute is that true. If you're ok with restricting volunteers to
the subset who are actually willing show a little effort, making the
process slightly cumbersome might even be a net benefit.

A little cumbersome? As I indicated in the thread about what has to change in the clojure contribution process,

it costs over $200 to mail a sheet of paper from Moscow to North Carolina with FedEx.

I can imagine for folks in Asia it is comparable or even more.

$200+ for an opportunity to contribute your time maintaining a wiki or fixing a bug? That counts

for a little more than "a little cumbersome" in my books.

--
MK

[Wes Freeman]

For what it's worth, I've organically discovered several of Clojurewerkz's projects just via google search, so I think Michael's methods work, although there is indeed a fair amount of effort involved in maintaining the promotion.

I like the https://twitter.com/nodenpm for node.js npm package updates. It's high noise, but I sometimes discover something that looks interesting. Clojars could do something similar--I'd follow.

Wes

--

[John Gabriele]

On Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:48:27 PM UTC-4, John Gabriele wrote:

On Sunday, September 23, 2012 4:00:28 PM UTC-4, zcaudate wrote:

is there some sort of categorised list/wiki that we can add to for new libraries?

I've started the Clojure Dining Car ...

Oh, sorry. You were specifically asking about promoting new libraries.

In that case, Michael's suggestions all sound like good ideas.

---John

[Mayank Jain]

While I don't mind sending a document via mail, but saying, Pay 50$ (Approx 2500 Indian Rupees) for "Hi, I want to help organize the library documentation for clojure" sounds unreasonable to me.

This maybe valid for US citizens, But you can't ask people who don't stay in US for such a procedure.

As for the quality of people who are trying to help, The fact that they put the effort to learn Clojure, call out and say "I want to help", Fill the form and validate themselves (in future electronically), and actually go and contribute should be enough to let them. And of course not everyone is expert on things from start. That's where the community comes in.

My 2 Cents.

[Michael Klishin]

2012/9/27 Wes Freeman <freem...@gmail.com>

For what it's worth, I've organically discovered several of Clojurewerkz's projects just via google search, so I think Michael's methods work, although there is indeed a fair amount of effort involved in maintaining the promotion.

It's not that much effort but there are many factors why ClojureWerkz projects rank pretty well in Google:

* Almost all of them were announced on google groups

* Some of them have their own google groups

* Project sites link back to clojurewerkz.org ("More Clojure libraries")

This means that google can pretty easily discover links and from there, discover other projects.

There's more:

* There is actual unique content for every ClojureWerkz project (our doc guides).

* In all project READMEs we try to cross-promote (within reason) and link to other libraries

* All project sites use carefully written copy. Not just something I came up with in 3 minutes, it usually takes a few attempts and I try to take common search queries into account.

* All project sites have google analytics and I check what people are searching for every few days. Monger's documentation over the last couple of months has been improved exclusively thanks to this analytics data and the feedback I get from real users.

I think it's not a secret that google tracks traffic flows from the search results page. So if you make people follow links to other projects ("Love this DB client? Check out this validation library we wrote"), it will eventually help your ranking.

So, it takes some effort to market your open source projects but it is not rocket science, all the tools

are available for free, all it takes is a little bit of attention and data about your visitors. The % of returning

visitors on "slow" days (when you are not publishing a blog post, like I did earlier today with Elastisch)

will tell you how you are doing. For Monger and Neocons it is something ridiculous, like 65-75%.

The only thing I consider a hack is that I signed up for Prismatic as @clojurewerkz. This means that every

single tweet from that account has a very high chance of showing up in prismatic feeds for folks who

follow Clojure, data stores/nosql, functional programming, etc. Prismatic accounts for a small fraction of

visitors but it leads to more tweets and exposure for people who actually care about technology, FP, etc.

If you have specific questions about how we do marketing for clojurewerkz.org or individual projects, just

ask. It's not a secret and I am as interested in helping other good Clojure libraries become more visible

as the other developer.