Re: ramblings.. or not

On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Julian Elischer <julian_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

> I just enjoyed the following video.
>
>   http://nextbsd.org/jordan-hubbard-visits-bafug/
>
>
That is a very good video.  It is good to see the NextBSD folks pushing
the boundaries and innovating with BSD.  A lot of the Apple technologies
have been battle tested by millions of users, so if FreeBSD can benefit
from them....why not?



> Do we have a standard path for ideas from these projects and DragonFly?
>

>From what I can tell, there is no "official" standard path for getting
anything into FreeBSD.
Ideally, people should bring up ideas and discuss things on the mailing
lists
beforehand.
That usually happens, but not always.

At the end of the day, getting things into FreeBSD involves someone
with a commit bit, who is motivated to slam the code into the tree.
Occasionally there are problems, but for the most part, things seem to work
out, and we've gotten cool things like ZFS, Dtrace, Netmap, etc.

At the end of Jordan's video, he mentioned that while it took him a while to
get accustomed to git, he realizes that git and git ecosystems like GitHub
greatly facilitate interacting with an open source project.  Forking,
submitting patches,
etc. are greatly



>
> We should also do a better job of productising and incorporating GSOC
> work..
>
>
Definitely!  It's sad to see people put a lot of working into something via
GSOC,
and then have the work die on the vine once the summer is over.



> Maybe we should make the "ideas" page more mainline.  Where people can put
> in a more standard way links to their pet projects and "offically" submit
> work for inclusion.
> and then make it better known..
>
>
I've been working with a software developer in Egypt, Ahmed Kamal, who has
helped
me a lot with devops issues in the Jenkins cluster.  Ahmed attended BSDCan
this year
and is eager to help out.  Many thanks to FreeBSD Foundation for giving him
a travel grant!

One comment that Ahmed made to me, and also to the FreeBSD Foundation,
is that for a complete newcomer to FreeBSD, it is very difficult for a
newcomer to
navigate all our web pages and wikis, and figure out where they can jump in
and contribute
to the project.

The FreeBSD project could definitely work to improve this area,
in order to attract new blood and new ideas to the project.  Streamlining
the ideas
page would be a good start.

--
Craig