From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0B2EA8B4 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 2015 22:18:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from outbound3.ore.mailhop.org (erouter8.ore.mailhop.org [54.187.218.212]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 751DCA8 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 2015 22:18:39 +0000 (UTC) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2015 22:18:36 +0000 From: Jason Cooper To: Peter Huewe Message-ID: <20150708221836.GN23515@io.lakedaemon.net> References: <201507080121.41463.PeterHuewe@gmx.de> <20150708140727.GH23515@io.lakedaemon.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Cc: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 09:29:57PM +0200, Peter Huewe wrote: > > > For testers it's usually even worse - how many patches are actually tested? > > > Judging from what I read on LKML not that many. > > > > > > So we should definitely discuss: > > > - how can we encourage hobbyists to become regular contributors > > > -- how to keep people interested, the drop-out rates are huge. > > > > Here we need to have the correct mindset. Kernel development is hard, > > detailed work. It's very rewarding, but simply put, most people aren't > > cut out to do it. I view the dropout rate as a *good* thing. It's a > > _selection_ process more than a education/training process. > > > > With most of the hard jobs in life, take a look at the > > training/education program, and you'll see it: 80% drop out rate? > > That's selection. Kernel work is one of those 'hard jobs'. > > > > This is important to realize because it changes how we view recruitment. > > We shouldn't be trying to keep everybody we recruit. Rather, we should > > be giving more people trial runs and see how they work out as they learn > > the process. > > > > iow, if an 80% drop out rate gives us the caliber of dev we need for the > > long term health of the community, then it's a numbers game. Say we saw > > 40 new people last year, which turned into 8 regular contributors. Now > > we want to double that. We can lower the standard to get 16 out > > of 40, yuck. Or, we can outreach to 80 for trial runs, and get 16. > > I think that's an interesting take on the topic - although I'm not > 100% whether I agree with everything. I agree that our goal is not to > lower the standards, and also using more "trial runs". > > However high standards should not be the reason to drive people away -- > and especially not the reason not to keep good people interested. Sure, I'm not suggesting anything like testing or anything formal. Merely that everyone understand there's an attrition rate, and that's *ok*. Recruitment, imo, isn't about trying to keep everyone that tries. Rather it's about opening the doors and providing real opportunities for more people to contribute. > Not only the bad people drop out, I've seen quite a lot of good devs > vanish for good - and these should be the ones we also should try to > keep - especially since I'm not sure whether we can allow such high > drop out rates over a long time. I'd love to hear some specific examples, links to email threads so we can quantify this. I suspect a lot of it is: "I scratched the itch, and didn't have anything else I wanted to add. Then daily life took me away." Which is the hard part about qualified people. They're busy. :-) Perhaps this can help direct the outreach portion. Should we focus on students who have stretches of downtime? That certainly has pluses and minuses. thx, Jason.