What do oss developers want from the CPF?

[TheDeeno (Dane O'Connor)]

Tons of questions remain unanswered about the specific role CPF is
going to play in this ecosystem. I think its clear (and stated?) that
this is a "soft-launch". Its good to see MS starting from the
community and working backward on this one. As such, I don't think its
fair to expect concrete details just yet. Likewise, its not fair for
MS to act like there ARE concrete details.

There has been a lot of talk about licensing and copyright handling.
While I think this talk is important, it seems a bit premature when
there isn't even clear incentive to deal with the CPF in the first
place.

IMO, the situation thus far is: MS wants to do SOMETHING with OSS and
they've created this foundation with a mission statement and bylaws.
They could have myriad reasons for doing this, but as for now they've
put the feelers out to gauge reaction and possibly see what to do
next.

I think we should start a conversation on this vain: What do we want
from CPF as OSS developers? How can CPF help us get what we want? I
think this type of feedback and discussion is important at this stage.
I don't see it happening enough.

[Ayende Rahien]

Resources. That may be outright hiring developers to work on the project, providing tech writers, providing things like servers for CI or to run the website. That is usually the biggest problem with most OSS.

Coaching. This works very well in the ASF, where candidate projects are in incubation while the structure of the project is guided by a mentor. It setup the ground works for a healthy eco system.

[John Petersen]

Agreed...These are the kinds of service I would should be incident to the Foundation.

JVP

[Anthony Papillion]

> I think we should start a conversation on this vain: What do we want
> from CPF as OSS developers? How can CPF help us get what we want? I
> think this type of feedback and discussion is important at this stage.
> I don't see it happening enough.

I think there are two things Microsoft can do via the CPF to help push
hard into the OSS space:

1. Provide affordable access to their development software to oss
developers in a similar way to what they do now via their BizSpark
program. While Visual Studio is a fantastic tool - best in class as
far as I'm concerned - the price for a small development team to
implement something like Team System is still too high. In an
enviroment where developers might be working for free and the project
may receive very little revenue, tools need to be affordable or they
just won't be chosen, regardless of how great they are.

2. Funding. This is going to be a sticking point, I'm sure, but
Microsoft has a very unique opportunity to help OSS through funding.
Imagine a team with a great idea not having to do it part time.
Through a small stipend from the CPF, developers could work on their
project full-time, push out some fantastic code, and really move the
project forward quickly and in a much more professional manner than
part-time developers would do.

I think these two points would go a long way in pushing MS and CPF
into the OSS world. While I'm sure it'll take some time for them to
get everything moving, I really don't see much else for them to do
beyond these two points that would make the CPF unique.

Just my $0.02,
Anthony

[Bil Simser]

Exposure
I look at the "project of the month" feature on SF and wonder why CP doesn't
offer something similar? Taking a project and spotlighting it to get
interest, promote membership, etc. To date, CP has become a 10,000 project
dumping ground of a bunch of things with a few hundred being top projects.
Everything else gets lost in the noise. Having a facility to bring something
up into the signal stream would be a nice benefit of users of the system.

Crawling
The n00bs of the world set out to start an OSS project. What do they need to
do? Pick a language? Pick a product? Find a host. Its like a passive
mentoring system for the community where someone with a bright idea but
without the skills to start can go and hit the ground running. Tossing
someone into the proverbial lions den without a single tool to their name
other than a MIT license is suicide for them. As a developer I would like to
see new projects come on board with the hope they won't become the 9,900
that nobody knows about but something more. As a contributor to the
community I would like to have an outlet where I can provide mentorship,
knowledge sharing, and generally lending a hand to get someone off the
ground without the uncomfortable problem of first contact.

[Michael Minutillo]

> Exposure

There was a good idea started on CodePlex back in March called the Open Source Club that I thought would be great for this http://blogs.msdn.com/codeplex/archive/2009/03/06/introducing-the-open-source-club-on-codeplex-project-of-the-month-rawr.aspx

Unfortunately the first project was the #1 most popular on CodePlex at the time and thus far another project has not been nominated AFAIK. As an OSS enthusiast I've often felt like I wanted to contribute but didn't know where to start. Having a bunch of people swarm to a particular project to provide assistance would allow for more of the mentoring side of things as well. Imagine having a pack of interested developers to get started on your idea. 

--
Michael M. Minutillo
Indiscriminate Information Sponge
Blog: http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com

[Aaron Weiker]

To expand on this some more. I think that it's not just providing MS software that the foundation should look into. For example, ReSharper and CodeRush are both tools that are popular among .NET developers. It would be great if the foundation could help make licensees available. In fact, getting the tools vendors themselves would also be good to get as supporters of the foundation.

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Anthony Papillion <papi...@gmail.com> wrote:

2. Funding.

[Daniel Cazzulino]

+1!

documentation, samples, and screencasts is what's most needed typically.

/kzu

--
Daniel Cazzulino | Developer Lead | XML MVP | Clarius Consulting | +1 425.329.3471

[Jeremy D. Miller]

Or merely a well organized portal into the docs, samples, and screencasts that do already exist.  I think there's a lot more resources for OSS development our there than the average team realizes.  Having that stuff categorized and linked from a de facto Microsoft site could help a lot of teams out.

 

Jeremy D. Miller
The Shade Tree Developer
jeremy...@yahoo.com

---

From: Daniel Cazzulino <k...@clariusconsulting.net>
To: codeplex-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 11:06:49 AM
Subject: Re: What do oss developers want from the CPF?

[Jay R. Wren]

I feel like I'm approaching dischord with respect to CPF :)

I totally disagree. The last thing we need is another .NET (or non-.net) OSS aggregate site. We have dozens if not hundreds of them. Everything is very easy to find if you know the right thing to google.

So that said, we need to figure out a way to increase information literacy among all developers. Why is it that you and I know just want to google to find pretty much exactly what we are looking for in the developer world, but other devs do not? Let find that and spread that information. Google driven development is a good thing to some extent.

--
Jay R. Wren

[scott...@gmail.com]

Jeremy, I'm not sure that Codeplex.ORG can provide that kind of
validation. Although I agree that CPF will always be seen as a
Microsoft "property", no matter how much it tries to distance itself
from Microsoft, it still won't get articles about OSS into MSDN
magazine or on msdn.microsoft.com, or get presentations about non-MS
OSS projects (e.g. not ASP.NET MVC or MEF) up on the big screen at MS
conferences (PDC, Tech-Ed, etc...). From a .NET OSS perspective,
that's really the next step IMO. Microsoft needs to OFFICIALLY
legitimize the .NET OSS ecosystem that exists beyond it's walls.
Linking to jQuery was a good first step. Getting PHP into the Web-PI
was another good move.

On Sep 18, 9:18 am, "Jeremy D. Miller" <jeremydmil...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Or merely a well organized portal into the docs, samples, and screencasts that do already exist.  I think there's a lot more resources for OSS development our there than the average team realizes.  Having that stuff categorized and linked from a de facto Microsoft site could help a lot of teams out.
>
>  Jeremy D. Miller
> The Shade Tree Developer

> jeremydmil...@yahoo.com

>
> ________________________________
> From: Daniel Cazzulino <k...@clariusconsulting.net>
> To: codeplex-...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 11:06:49 AM
> Subject: Re: What do oss developers want from the CPF?
>
> +1!
>
> documentation, samples, and screencasts is what's most needed typically.
>
> /kzu
>
> --
> Daniel Cazzulino | Developer Lead | XML MVP | Clarius Consulting | +1 425.329.3471
>
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 13:02, Ayende Rahien <aye...@ayende.com> wrote:
>
> Resources. That may be outright hiring developers to work on the
>
>
>
> >project, providing tech writers, providing things like servers for CI
> >or to run the website. That is usually the biggest problem with most
> >OSS.
>
> >Coaching. This works very well in the ASF, where candidate projects
> >are in incubation while the structure of the project is guided by a
> >mentor. It setup the ground works for a healthy eco system.
>

[Jeremy D. Miller]

Scott, here or there, that's the biggest single thing I think they should do.  A simple visible validation from Microsoft would carry a tremendous amount of weight.

---

From: "sc...@lazycoder.com" <scott...@gmail.com>
To: CodePlex Foundation <codeplex-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 1:18:24 PM

[Ayende Rahien]

Scott,
There is going to be an NHibernate article by me in December issue of MSDN Mag.
I wrote for msdn.microsoft.com about Windsor in the past, as did James Kovacks and others.

We don't need CPF for that, the future is here :-)

[Bil Simser]

Agreed. Speaking as a portal guy, all the information is out there and very little has to actually be written. It would be good to stand something up that provides a pane of glass view of the existing information out there and a way to easily find it. Google/Bing is fine but you’re searching the entire Internet rather than a focused set of sources.

[Bil Simser]

Sorry, don’t agree. If we have hundreds of resources out there why are people walking around scratching their heads when they want to get started or find resources? They don’t have good Google skills? I’m tired of Google being the answer to everything. If that’s the case, then the CPF can be represented by a big blank page with a search box on it (and you might as well put an eight ball next to it for a submit button).

[Ayende Rahien]

Who maintains that?

[Eric Hexter]

I would like to see the following:

 

Break down the barriers to adoption for framework OSS projects to corporate and government organizations:

 

Support development of high quality oss projects through grants and stipends.  I think it would be more efficient to fund developers who are already actively committing to projects rather than throwing some staff developers who potentially are just floating from project to project without being actual users of the OSS projects.

 

I would like to see funding put towards build server and server to host samples for the projects. Right now those are the things that end up coming out of the pocket of the people running the projects.

 

I like the idea of helping pull together existing content that is out there and more importantly filtering out old information.

[Adam Goetz]

I can agree with what Eric says. Especially on government
organizations. The agencies I've worked at have pretty much have had
"roll your own" systems. A lot of the time it made for some buggy and/
or hard to test code. Just from a taxpayer's perspective I'd love to
see governments using money more efficiently.

There has been talk of educating businesses about OSS elsewhere on
this group. I think it would be nice to see some education material
for developers that would like to get started contributing to OSS
projects. I think there are a lot of people out there like me that
would like to help, but don't necessarily know where to jump in.

Thanks,
Adam Goetz

On Sep 18, 7:41 pm, Eric Hexter <eric.hex...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would like to see the following:
>
> Break down the barriers to adoption for framework OSS projects to corporate
> and government organizations:
>
> Support development of high quality oss projects through grants and
> stipends.  I think it would be more efficient to fund developers who are
> already actively committing to projects rather than throwing some staff
> developers who potentially are just floating from project to project without
> being actual users of the OSS projects.
>
> I would like to see funding put towards build server and server to host
> samples for the projects. Right now those are the things that end up coming
> out of the pocket of the people running the projects.
>
> I like the idea of helping pull together existing content that is out there
> and more importantly filtering out old information.
>
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Ayende Rahien <aye...@ayende.com> wrote:
> > Who maintains that?
>

> > On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:41 AM, Bil Simser <emai...@bilsimser.com> wrote:
>
> >>  Sorry, don’t agree. If we have hundreds of resources out there why are
> >> people walking around scratching their heads when they want to get started
> >> or find resources? They don’t have good Google skills? I’m tired of Google
> >> being the answer to everything. If that’s the case, then the CPF can be
> >> represented by a big blank page with a search box on it (and you might as
> >> well put an eight ball next to it for a submit button).
>

> >> *From:* codeplex-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> >> codeplex-...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Jay R. Wren
> >> *Sent:* September-18-09 10:32 AM
> >> *To:* codeplex-...@googlegroups.com
> >>  *Subject:* Re: What do oss developers want from the CPF?

>
> >> I feel like I'm approaching dischord with respect to CPF :)
>
> >> I totally disagree. The last thing we need is another .NET (or non-.net)
> >> OSS aggregate site. We have dozens if not hundreds of them. Everything is
> >> very easy to find if you know the right thing to google.
>
> >> So that said, we need to figure out a way to increase information literacy
> >> among all developers. Why is it that you and I know just want to google to
> >> find pretty much exactly what we are looking for in the developer world, but
> >> other devs do not? Let find that and spread that information. Google driven
> >> development is a good thing to some extent.
>
> >> --
> >> Jay R. Wren
>
> >>  On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Jeremy D. Miller <

> >> jeremydmil...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> Or merely a well organized portal into the docs, samples, and screencasts
> >> that do already exist.  I think there's a lot more resources for OSS
> >> development our there than the average team realizes.  Having that stuff
> >> categorized and linked from a de facto Microsoft site could help a lot of
> >> teams out.
>
> >> Jeremy D. Miller

> >> The Shade Tree Developer <http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller>
> >> jeremydmil...@yahoo.com
>
> >>  ------------------------------
>
> >> *From:* Daniel Cazzulino <k...@clariusconsulting.net>
> >> *To:* codeplex-...@googlegroups.com
> >> *Sent:* Friday, September 18, 2009 11:06:49 AM
> >> *Subject:* Re: What do oss developers want from the CPF?

[Jay Glynn]

Finding it isn't as much of an issue as finding something that is worth reading/watching.following. That's where Google/Bing hurts more then helps.

[Stephen Bohlen]

I'm quite curious about what we (or anyone) believes to be the present impediments (or 'gap', to use the term offered by the CPF) to either or both of the following:

• adoption of OSS projects by business/gov't organizations
• participation of employess of business/gov''t organizations in OSS projects

If we believe (as seems to be hinted at in some conversation) that (one of) the primary blockers is 'education', 'understanding', etc. on the part of these organizations then it seems to me that the hinted-at mission of CPF to bring clarity and understanding about OSS to such entities by 'bridging the gap' might be attainable through increased awareness, outreach, education, etc.  In this context, I could care less about whether the foundation is MS-centric as this 'evangelism-of-OSS' task would probably be *helped* in re: its validity to business by having ties at *some level* to a corporate entity (e.g., following the mantra of 'large companies trust and want to do business with other large companies", etc.)

 

But if we believe (as is also hinted at here in some conversations) that (one of) the primary impediments to such things is the murky, sometimes contradictory, and at-best unproven/insufficient precedent of OSS licenses, legal liability issues, and risk-mitigation that surrounds OSS involvement in general (whether from a contribution or adoption standpoint), then I don't realistically see what CPF can do in this regard.  Without doing one or more of the following, I don't see making any impact at all in re: this area:

• indemnify contributors to CPF projects from legal actions
• verify/validate the CV of all code contributions to CPF projects
• actively defend the infringement of copyright, trademark, and other infringements against CPF projects to ensure clarity in the OSS ecosystem around a CPF project

FWIW, I seriously doubt that any of the above such things are fundamentally possible for the CPF to achieve or are in any way really part of its stated goals (at least thus far).

 

But I think a lot of this comes down to what one really means when one talks about the 'gap' between OSS and business.  WIthout agreement on the fundamentals of what contitutes that 'gap' its near-impossible to agree on what actions are reasonable to 'bridge the gap'.

 

Since efforts to get CPF to state what concrete actions it will take to solve "the problems" are meeting with (not entirely indefensible) responses of "we aren't yet certain until the non-interim board is appointed", perhaps we could simply get more clarity from CPF about its definition of the problem ('gap') its trying to solve.  At least if we in the community better understood (in concrete terms) CPF's view of the problem, these discussions about 'tactics' would be more meaningful (IMO).

 

Would anyone from the CPF interim board be able to state clearly, succinctly, and without equivocation about the CPF's view of what the underyling cause(s) of this 'gap' actually are from their perspective?  It seems it would help focus this kind of thread a bit to have a clear statement of the problem-set before trying to discuss a universe of (possible) solutions.

 

Just my two-cents.

Steve Bohlen
sbo...@gmail.com
http://blog.unhandled-exceptions.com
http://twitter.com/sbohlen

[Jason]

In addition, I would like to see the foundation sponsor individual
project events, education, and public advocacy. If businesses/
governments see the foundation providing support, infrastructure, and
the legal framework it's going to make it easier to contribute and use
the project. This is a good thing for people who want to use OSS in
traditional commercial environments.

As Jay mentioned earlier, it would be a shame if the foundation wasn’t
well organized and became a big aggregate. I think this can be avoided
though by supporting and giving grants to the most vital or
influential projects and help restructure and organize as needed.


Thanks,
Jason

[Jay R. Wren]

Ask any librarian. Google IS the first step to information literacy. it IS the first place to look for answers. Now, what people do with those answers is important.

Anyone who googles for information about .net is going to notice some common things in the results.
* MSDN
* codeproject
* stackoverflow
* blogs.msdn.com
* weblogs.asp.net
* codebetter.com
* dotnetkicks
* csharp-source.net

noticing that these sites and many others are showing up in search results is the first step in better information literacy. Turning CPF into just another one of these sites does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem. It turns CPF into another "me too" site. It is useless.

--
Jay R. Wren

[Daniel Cazzulino]

I'd agree that simple content aggregation is useless. CPF could be just one more of the sites you mention, the difference being that it would be one that could actually provide original content whenever some tech writer in the CPF finds that people need help on some are in a sponsored project. 

They could be filling the gaps if any, and even hiring professional writers/developers to write those if needed (i.e. you could be getting paid to do a screencast on your favorite OSS -sponsored- project).  This is one more way of supporting a project so that it's more than just a labor of love.

It doesn't need to become the entry-point for the project, though. It/I could still leverage google/bing for that.

/kzu

--
Daniel Cazzulino | Developer Lead | XML MVP | Clarius Consulting | +1 425.329.3471