This document discusses communities in open source projects. It defines a community as people with a common purpose who communicate and contribute towards a shared goal. It emphasizes that building a community is more challenging than joining an established one. It provides tips for effectively communicating with an open source community through mailing lists, IRC, issue trackers, and following best practices for development. The overall message is that building and maintaining a strong community is important for open source projects.

1. Community Matters!!!111
Kathiravelu Pradeeban
AbiWord

2. What is a
community?
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3. People with a common purpose or goal
Communicating with each other
Contributing towards the goal
Like a big family
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4. Open Source Communities!
Volunteers!
Not just developers!
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5. I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?
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6. Your interest..
.. Not everyone gets a chance to live..
.. a second life ..
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7. I put this image of a hexapus,
'cos I find it motivating!
♥
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8. Joining a community..
Find the right project.
Acquire the skills/expertise.
Netiquettes.
Sign up to the lists.
Join the relevant channel.
Observe and adjust yourself.
Get your basics and motives right.
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10. Building a community
More challenging than joining a well-
established community.
Goals
How to bring new blood in!
Effective Communications..
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11. What makes your organization
lovable?
Expertise in the domain.
Healthy culture.
Defined best-practices.
Welcoming environment.
Research and Learning.
Fun.
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12. Technologies..
Project Hosting
SourceForge, GitHub, Google Code, ..
Version Control Systems
SVN, CVS, GIT, Mercurial, ..
Build Tools
Ant, Maven, ..
Issue Tracker
Bugzilla, Jira, Trac, ..
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13. Communicating
with the community..
Mailing Lists
Dev, User, Commit lists, sub-groups, ..
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
Issue Tracker
Forums and wiki
Blogs
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14. Mailing lists
The principal discussion medium.
Asynchronous
"bring it to the mailing list"
Be friendly.
Say NO to toxic people.
Slow ?
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15. IRC
A real time medium.
Not logged mostly.
Not for major decision making.
Who hangs here?
Mostly devs.
Not many designers and localizers.
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16. Network Etiquettes
Be Specific and clear.
Research (google.. ;)) before asking.
Be helpful to others.
Be ethical; respect.
NO CAPS! (UNLESS YOU ARE SHOUTING!)
Don't take messages personally.
Dn't snd ur sms msgs to thrds or lsts.
Language/English
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17. Proper Addressing..
over the lists/irc/..
Address the devs and users properly.
First Name or Preferred calling name.
Be gender neutral.
Not too personal.
Use “Hi”, instead of “Dear”.
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18. User Community
90% - does not communicate.
9% - submits bug reports.
1% - involves proactively.
Localizers can help!
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19. Getting new blood in!
Experience
Language(s) of the project.
Project expertise
Bug reports and patches.
Assisting others.
Willingness
To contribute to the community back.
We want committers and long time volunteers!
Not just users!
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20. Development
Best Practices
Commit often.
with meaningful commit messages.
Get feedback from the community.
Keep the community updated.
Major decisions through mailing lists.
F2F discussions with beer are not “decisions”!
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21. Be Known..
Be heard
Academics
Events
Collaboration!
With other communities.
The media.
The Internet.
Be responsive to the users.
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22. References
Community Matters!!!111
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23. Thank you..
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