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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/11/12 5:40 AM, Joshua Cranmer
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCF5B6.8070902@gmail.com" type="cite">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/10/2012 8:34 PM, Axel wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCC9F8.5090506@gmail.com" type="cite">
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<div id="IDstID">For an outsider it is sometimes hard to
determine who works on what, and it might help if there was
some feature/module-centric (team)focus... what do you think?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
As Kent mentioned, I decided to put up a tb-roadmap etherpad
detailing the kinds of major projects that I think would be useful
for Thunderbird, and am happy to solicit feedback from anyone
else. I'm also currently preparing a proposal-via-blog-post about
the missing parts of our automated testing regime.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Can you share the etherpad ?<br>
<br>
<br>
I believe we can build a community nowish as we are having momentum
- we probably need to communicate things we decide and do a bit more
widely to this mailing list - because not everyone is reading it.<br>
<br>
Now let's see if I was currently 'just' a Thunderbird user and
figured out that I need to do something to make sure that my
favorite email client is going to have a viable future what would I
be faced with.<br>
<br>
<br>
I would need to find a clear and easily findable entry point - a
place where I can come quickly read some text or watch a quick
video, which would let me then decide how I can help. As a user I
can decide where to help based on two major point and on a minor one
:<br>
<ol>
<li>How much time can I invest every week for the project</li>
<li>What are my technical skills</li>
<li>and the minor one is more around how much do I want to learn
so I can do 'more'</li>
</ol>
<p>I've tried but I'm not sure I succeeded when I changed the way
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing</a> read and look.<br>
</p>
<p>I think starting with a roadmap is a very good idea and that will
let us figure out where do we go from here. Having documents like
the state of unit and automated testing is really helpful even for
me to understand what's missing and where should work be allocated
if anybody showed up with time to add more tests. So I think
rkent's idea of building a list of bugs and saying these are the
ones we would like to fix is a great idea to start a good roadmap.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
We'll also need a better way to communicate - and I think we
should rethink the way the weekly meetings are held. I think the
format of the meetings these days is more like, the paid staff is
communicating to the world in a very formal way on the progress
and doings around Thunderbird. I'd like these meetings to be way
more discussion based and not just here is what we've done. A Long
time ago (back in 2009), we had a format of meeting that felt a
lot more collaborative, where people would do a stand up and say,
this week I've worked on and next week I'll be working on - to me
it felt like we were more acting with and within the very small
Thunderbird community.<br>
</p>
<p>A lot of what I wrote here is what we did with Camino back in
2003 - when AOL reaffected all the resources. We started having a
irc channel different then #developers, we created a website etc
etc .. What we had that we don't have right now is a strong leader
that all users knew. I'm not saying we need a leader, we just need
a leader's communication channel (ie what happens to the
Thunderbird blog, and twitter accounts ?) that make it easier to
attract people.<br>
</p>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCF5B6.8070902@gmail.com" type="cite">
<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCC9F8.5090506@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div id="IDstID"> I think<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Thunderbird</a><br>
<br>
is a really good starting, and I would like to see more names
and more modules here - I would like to get involved in the
Filter Piece :) . Also for those of us who cannot spare daily
IRC time, it would be cool if weekly (or fortnightly)
timeslots for module discussions could be organized. One could
then put out calls to the community for participation if we
need more manpower.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I have been informed that the modules page is currently in the
process of being updated, but I do not know what the final result
would be.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
So even when the modules page gets updated, let's see how module
ownership has worked over the last few years. But do we really want
to drive Thunderbird by modules ? or is it not what you guys are
proposing ? <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCF5B6.8070902@gmail.com" type="cite">
<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCC9F8.5090506@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div id="IDstID"> If we had small teams of people who could
cluster around certain areas of expertise and we had some
known leaders for these who can make the final decisions or
are the go-to guys for asking before somebody attempts to
patch something it also might make work more efficient. (this
might already be organized this way, I do not know the process
well enough at the moment, but some transparency would sure be
nice).<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think we have people who are leaders for the modules and are
willing to be consulted on patch approaches beforehand (I know I
often discuss my major projects with important stakeholders before
writing the first line of code), but the problem is that either no
one knows who they are or the fora available to us are
inconvenient. Part of my idea behind the etherpad was just to
start putting down thoughts about high-level goals; perhaps
adopting an additional mentoring approach like Firefox would be
worthwhile.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Won't that depend on time constraint from the module owners ?<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4FFCF5B6.8070902@gmail.com" type="cite"> <br>
Another, kind of related issue that I have as a module owner is I
feel the basic tracking tools I have are rather lousy, since
bugzilla just isn't cutting it. Unfortunately, I'm also at the
time of night where being able to articulate anything is
impossible, so I'll shut up now...<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
We might also take a look at how Camino and Seamonkey have managed
themselves over the few years. Kairo care to shim in ?<br>
<br>
Smokey want to shim in too ?<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing</a>
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