Code of Conduct: Is it time?
Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".
Some of us may be saying, "Well we don't want those people". I can't
argue with some facts though. Ubuntu has had a CoC[1] since the
beginning of the project and they grew exceedingly quick. Having walls
in the hallway of interaction isn't always a bad thing.
In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what
behaviour we as a project already require, so why not document it and
use it as a tool to encourage more contribution to our project?
Sincerely,
JD
1. http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct
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Joshua,
I have to agree that a COC is in order. But to add to that, I would like to
see basic requirements when submitting a problem.
IE: 1. Version of PostgreSQL
2.. O/S
3. Enough info to duplicate the problem EG: minimal schema & data
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:
Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you are
going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it. Unfortunately a
lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the course of the last
year seen more and more potential users very explicitly say, "I will not
contribute to a project or attend a conference that does not have a CoC".Some of us may be saying, "Well we don't want those people". I can't argue
with some facts though. Ubuntu has had a CoC[1] since the beginning of the
project and they grew exceedingly quick. Having walls in the hallway of
interaction isn't always a bad thing.In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what behaviour
we as a project already require, so why not document it and use it as a
tool to encourage more contribution to our project?Sincerely,
JD
1. http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct
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wish to share my fantasy is entirely up to you.
On 01/05/2016 08:56 AM, Melvin Davidson wrote:
Joshua,
I have to agree that a COC is in order. But to add to that, I would like
to see basic requirements when submitting a problem.
IE: 1. Version of PostgreSQL
2.. O/S
3. Enough info to duplicate the problem EG: minimal schema & data
Although I agree with you. This is completely off topic for this thread.
Please create a new thread for those requests. I don't want to see this
thread hijacked.
JD
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On 01/05/2016 08:47 AM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".
The Brendan Eich fiasco at Mozilla taught me all I need to know about
CoC's and their uselessness and un-enforceability.
Some of us may be saying, "Well we don't want those people". I can't
argue with some facts though. Ubuntu has had a CoC[1] since the
beginning of the project and they grew exceedingly quick. Having walls
in the hallway of interaction isn't always a bad thing.In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what
behaviour we as a project already require, so why not document it and
use it as a tool to encourage more contribution to our project?Sincerely,
JD
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160
In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what
behaviour we as a project already require, so why not document it and
use it as a tool to encourage more contribution to our project?
+1, been thinking about this same thing recently. I disagree that
it is a waste of time, but I'm happy if we get one, regardless
of different people's rationales for it.
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PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201601051213
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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On 01/05/2016 09:06 AM, Adrian Klaver wrote:
Brendan Eich fiasco
Has absolutely nothing to do with a CoC. At least from my understanding
of what happened.
JD
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On January 5, 2016 5:47:16 PM GMT+01:00, "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".
Do they give a rational for that?
Some of us may be saying, "Well we don't want those people". I can't
argue with some facts though. Ubuntu has had a CoC[1] since the
beginning of the project and they grew exceedingly quick. Having walls
in the hallway of interaction isn't always a bad thing.In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what
behaviour we as a project already require, so why not document it and
use it as a tool to encourage more contribution to our project?Sincerely,
JD
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On 01/05/2016 11:08 AM, Roland van Laar wrote:
On January 5, 2016 5:47:16 PM GMT+01:00, "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".Do they give a rational for that?
I don't think I am a good person to rationalize their reasoning because
I don't like the idea of a CoC. That said, I think a lot of boils down
to perception, responsibility, accountability and the fact that a lot of
people are flat out jerks. I am not talking the ball busting type of
jerk but honest, just not nice people or people who vastly lack the
ability to integrate with larger society. Those people tend to need
guidelines for their jerkiness because they will say, "I didn't know I
couldn't do/say XYZ". Whether that is true or not, I have no idea.
JD
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On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
On 01/05/2016 11:08 AM, Roland van Laar wrote:
On January 5, 2016 5:47:16 PM GMT+01:00, "Joshua D. Drake"
<jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:Hello,
I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".Do they give a rational for that?
I don't think I am a good person to rationalize their reasoning because I
don't like the idea of a CoC. That said, I think a lot of boils down to
perception, responsibility, accountability and the fact that a lot of people
are flat out jerks. I am not talking the ball busting type of jerk but
honest, just not nice people or people who vastly lack the ability to
integrate with larger society. Those people tend to need guidelines for
their jerkiness because they will say, "I didn't know I couldn't do/say
XYZ". Whether that is true or not, I have no idea.
CoC:
1: Use our code how you want
2: Don't sue us
3: Don't be a jerk
done.
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On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 6:09 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
On 01/05/2016 11:08 AM, Roland van Laar wrote:
On January 5, 2016 5:47:16 PM GMT+01:00, "Joshua D. Drake"
<jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:I had a hard time writing this email. I think Code of Conducts are
non-essential, a waste of respectful people's time and frankly if you
are going to be a jerk, our community will call you out on it.
Unfortunately a lot of people don't agree with that. I have over the
course of the last year seen more and more potential users very
explicitly say, "I will not contribute to a project or attend a
conference that does not have a CoC".Do they give a rational for that?
I don't think I am a good person to rationalize their reasoning because I
don't like the idea of a CoC. That said, I think a lot of boils down to
perception, responsibility, accountability and the fact that a lot of people
are flat out jerks. I am not talking the ball busting type of jerk but
honest, just not nice people or people who vastly lack the ability to
integrate with larger society. Those people tend to need guidelines for
their jerkiness because they will say, "I didn't know I couldn't do/say
XYZ". Whether that is true or not, I have no idea.
Being a jerk is not a problem that can be solved with a code of
conduct, just something that each individual should try to solve by
himself. And IMHO, this would just complicate the contribution flow
and the life of people who could potentially provide something useful.
Folks on the mailing lists here are really cool and it is possible to
have really nice and constructive conversations on many topics anyway,
the presence of a CoC is not going to change that, and that's what
matters.
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On 1/5/16 6:32 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
I don't think I am a good person to rationalize their reasoning because I
don't like the idea of a CoC. That said, I think a lot of boils down to
perception, responsibility, accountability and the fact that a lot of people
are flat out jerks. I am not talking the ball busting type of jerk but
honest, just not nice people or people who vastly lack the ability to
integrate with larger society. Those people tend to need guidelines for
their jerkiness because they will say, "I didn't know I couldn't do/say
XYZ". Whether that is true or not, I have no idea.CoC:
1: Use our code how you want
2: Don't sue us
3: Don't be a jerk
Well, that highlights that it's not just about a CoC, it's the things
that surround it. Especially what the conflict resolution policy is.
I suspect JD thought about this because of a recent Facebook thread[1]https://www.facebook.com/jon.erdman.jr/posts/10153828693183899
about how the FreeBSD community just screwed this up big-time[2]http://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-known-as-freebsdgirl/. The
big screw-up was not having solid ways to deal with such complaints in
place. Sadly, as part of that thread, it comes to light that there is
some history of this in the Postgres project as well.
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the Postgres
community doesn't focus on developing the community itself. The closest
we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about how we need more
developers. There is no formal discussion/leadership/coordination
towards actively building and strengthening our community. Until that
changes, I fear we will always have a lack of developers. More
importantly, we will continue to lack all the other ways that people
could contribute beyond writing code. IE: the talk shouldn't be about
needing more developers, it should be about needing people who want to
contribute time to growing the community.
I saw a great presentation about building a strong community by Joan
Touzet of CouchDB. The presentation link is currently down, but there's
a great interview with her at [3]https://opensource.com/life/15/8/couchdb-community-apache-way -- Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com. CouchDB didn't focus on community
building until they had a major problem to deal with. Now, they make
community one of their focal points. Just one example, this is the 3rd
paragraph on their home page:
"We welcome your contributions. CouchDB is an open source project.
Everything, from this website to the core of the database itself, has
been contributed by helpful individuals. The time and attention of our
contributors is our most precious resource, and we always need more of
it. Our primary goal is to build a welcoming, supporting, inclusive and
diverse community. We abide by Code of Conduct and a set of Project
Bylaws. Come join us!"
What I'd love to see is support and commitment from the Postgres
community to actively attract people who will focus not on the code but
on building the community itself. I know there are people in the
community that would be interested in doing that, but without active
support and some encouragement things aren't going to change.
[1]: https://www.facebook.com/jon.erdman.jr/posts/10153828693183899
[2]: http://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-known-as-freebsdgirl/
http://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-known-as-freebsdgirl/
[3]: https://opensource.com/life/15/8/couchdb-community-apache-way -- Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com
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On 01/05/2016 05:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
Well, that highlights that it's not just about a CoC, it's the things
that surround it. Especially what the conflict resolution policy is.I suspect JD thought about this because of a recent Facebook thread[1]
about how the FreeBSD community just screwed this up big-time[2]. The
big screw-up was not having solid ways to deal with such complaints in
place. Sadly, as part of that thread, it comes to light that there is
some history of this in the Postgres project as well.
The Facebook post was the secondary catalyst. The primary one was
discussions I have had on twitter about CoCs as well as continual work
with various conferences.
What I'd love to see is support and commitment from the Postgres
community to actively attract people who will focus not on the code but
on building the community itself. I know there are people in the
community that would be interested in doing that, but without active
support and some encouragement things aren't going to change.
Since the first PostgreSQL Conference East in Maryland, I have requested
this. A good portion of the keynote was about this. For some reason our
community doesn't show a lot of interest.
Sincerely,
JD
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On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.
That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me. The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective. when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors. The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air. you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful.
--
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On 1/5/16 10:03 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me. The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective. when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors. The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air. you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful.
Then why is it that there is almost no contribution to the community
other than code and mailing list discussion?
Why is the infrastructure team composed entirely of highly experienced
code contributors, of which there are ~200 on the planet, when there are
literally 100s of thousands (if not millions) of people out there that
could do that work (and could probably do it better if it's what they do
for a living, no offense to the efforts of the infrastructure team).
Why is there a lack of developers? And a serious lack of code reviewers?
--
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Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com
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On 6 Jan 2016, at 03:47, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
In reflection, the only thing a CoC does is put in writing what behaviour we as a project already require, so why not document it and use it as a tool to encourage more contribution to our project?
I fully agree with you. No one would question documenting (or advertising) any particular feature - indeed, the quality of documentation is a feature in itself. I'm reminded of this 2006 quote from Joss Whedon [1]http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1018998-why-aren-t-you-asking-a-hundred-other-guys-why-they:
Q: So, why do you write these strong female characters?
A: Because you’re still asking me that question.
The Postgres community is also a great "feature", maybe the question we should be asking is - "why isn't it documented yet?”? I don’t see a CoC as an end in itself, it’s merely an artefact of a community that is as proud of it’s workings as it’s output.
Regards,
Tony
[1]: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1018998-why-aren-t-you-asking-a-hundred-other-guys-why-they
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On Tue, 2016-01-05 at 22:41 -0600, Jim Nasby wrote:
On 1/5/16 10:03 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me. The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective. when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors. The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air. you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful.Then why is it that there is almost no contribution to the community
other than code and mailing list discussion?Why is the infrastructure team composed entirely of highly experienced
code contributors, of which there are ~200 on the planet, when there are
literally 100s of thousands (if not millions) of people out there that
could do that work (and could probably do it better if it's what they do
for a living, no offense to the efforts of the infrastructure team).Why is there a lack of developers? And a serious lack of code reviewers?
--
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com
As long as I've participated in the list, I've had access to the very
best conversations
and technical discussions from my fellow decorated contributors.
The coc sounds like a Washington politics play, but as long as the best
still engage
in this forum, I could care less. The list serves its purpose without
overhead...a rare
resource in today's flood of incoherent technical chatter.
Happy New Year!
Bret Stern
President
Machine Management
On 1/5/2016 6:13 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
On 01/05/2016 05:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
Well, that highlights that it's not just about a CoC, it's the things
that surround it. Especially what the conflict resolution policy is.I suspect JD thought about this because of a recent Facebook thread[1]
about how the FreeBSD community just screwed this up big-time[2]. The
big screw-up was not having solid ways to deal with such complaints in
place. Sadly, as part of that thread, it comes to light that there is
some history of this in the Postgres project as well.The Facebook post was the secondary catalyst. The primary one was
discussions I have had on twitter about CoCs as well as continual work
with various conferences.What I'd love to see is support and commitment from the Postgres
community to actively attract people who will focus not on the code but
on building the community itself. I know there are people in the
community that would be interested in doing that, but without active
support and some encouragement things aren't going to change.Since the first PostgreSQL Conference East in Maryland, I have
requested this. A good portion of the keynote was about this. For some
reason our community doesn't show a lot of interest.
I'm a relatively quiet observer of the lists (and user of Postgres off
and on). Having organized a group of virtual discussion lists many
moons ago and to help manage the volume of new contributors forced a CoC
on them which both helped and hurt the community. I personally see no
problem with a CoC, but am experienced enough to be cautious about the
implementation.
You implied in your first post that you would attract more contributors
with a CoC. Jim Nasby posted links which outline recent issues related
to harassment. Other comments in this thread lead me to believe that
there are other potential perspectives ... Can I ask...
What specific problem or problems does the Postgres community currently
experience ?
What specific problem or problems might the Postgres community
experience (that you would like to avoid)?
[ that has led you to believe having a CoC would solve? ]
Roxanne
Sincerely,
JD
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Donald Knuth
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On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com> wrote:
On 1/5/16 10:03 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me. The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective. when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors. The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air. you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful.Then why is it that there is almost no contribution to the community other
than code and mailing list discussion?Why is the infrastructure team composed entirely of highly experienced
code contributors, of which there are ~200 on the planet, when there are
literally 100s of thousands (if not millions) of people out there that
could do that work (and could probably do it better if it's what they do
for a living, no offense to the efforts of the infrastructure team).Why is there a lack of developers? And a serious lack of code reviewers?
I agree with Jim, something is wrong, I see our developers community isn't
growing and getting older. There is no formal problem to start contribute,
but steep learning curve and lack of mentoring practice scare people.
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Show quoted text
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com--
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2016-01-06 8:08 GMT+01:00 Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com>:
On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com>
wrote:On 1/5/16 10:03 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me. The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective. when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors. The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air. you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful..
Then why is it that there is almost no contribution to the community
other than code and mailing list discussion?Why is the infrastructure team composed entirely of highly experienced
code contributors, of which there are ~200 on the planet, when there are
literally 100s of thousands (if not millions) of people out there that
could do that work (and could probably do it better if it's what they do
for a living, no offense to the efforts of the infrastructure team).Why is there a lack of developers? And a serious lack of code reviewers?
I agree with Jim, something is wrong, I see our developers community isn't
growing and getting older. There is no formal problem to start contribute,
but steep learning curve and lack of mentoring practice scare people.
The CoC doesn't solve it. We do on mature, stable, pretty complex code -
use C (not JavaScript or Java). This isn't hobby project or student
project.
Taking new developers needs the hard individual work with any potential
developer/student. I see as interesting one point - PostgreSQL
extensibility - the less experienced developer can write extension, there
can be interesting experimental extensions that can be supported without
risk of unstability of core code. Can be nice to allow to write not only C
language extensions. Then the Postgres can be used on universities and in
some startup companies - and it can increase the number of active
developers. My very talented colleague doesn't write to Postgres due C
language. He like to write planner in lisp or erlang. Or like to play in
these languages. C is barrier for younger people.
I don't afraid about community - I see some new faces from Russia and other
countries. There is 1/10000 ratio of Postgres developers and Postgres
users. Hard to change it. Almost all developers write code for job not for
hobby.
Regards
Pavel
Show quoted text
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com--
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2016-01-06 9:08 GMT+02:00 Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com>:
I agree with Jim, something is wrong, I see our developers community isn't
growing and getting older. There is no formal problem to start contribute,
but steep learning curve and lack of mentoring practice scare people.
I agree, that learning curve is very steep.
Back in 1999 there was Programmer's Guide (edited by Thomas Lockhart). Sad,
that this part of the documentation is not evolving anymore — it'd be just
great to get a high-level overview of, say, query parsing and planning, or
details of libpq protocol. Perhaps, this is a good project for a newby to
do. Perhaps, it is worthwhile to create Developer's documentation, either
as a section in the official docs or as a separate resource with structure
and design similar to the official docs?
Another very wanted change in the community is mentorship. Personally, I
don't feel confident to ask endless questions I have when looking into the
code, as I understand, that this might be a very basic (for PostgreSQL
hackers) stuff. For me it'd be a great helper, if I could talk this over
(via e-mail or any messenger) with experienced developer. Reminds me of
what we do for the GSoC, where developers volunteer for mentoring students.
Something similar would be handy in general, perhaps with a web interface
similar to the CommitFest's one.
--
Victor Y. Yegorov
