OpenHatch newsletter, October 2012
Welcome to the 3rd OpenHatch newsletter!
FLOSS Weekly interviewed Jessica McKellar about the Twisted project, and about welcoming newcomers and increasing diversity in open source projects. Co-host Dan Lynch asks specifically about OpenHatch at 28 minutes in. The whole show is excellent!
Fall 2012 Open Source Comes to Campus is underway
OpenHatch ran a workshop at Johns Hopkins University in mid-September. A full report is forthcoming on the blog.
We’re running a workshop at the Association for Computing Machinery at the University of Illinois’ 18th annual computing conference on October 5-7, 2012.
Asheesh also delivered a talk at San Francisco State University, focusing on community communication skills.
Event wrapups
Daniel Choi, a member of the Events list, contributes an amazing analysis of bringing more women into the Boston Ruby community, full of data and anecdote!
Yours here!
Join the events mailing list to share your experiences and get help with making your events beginner-friendly.
OpenHatchy but not OpenHatch things around the web
Glyn Moody concludes in Learning from Diaspora (page 2):
The open source world does many things brilliantly, but one thing it does badly is planning for leadership succession. This was the case over a decade ago, when I explored the area in “Rebel Code”, my early history of the free software world. Worryingly, little has changed since then. Even the nurturing of new coders remains a very hit-and-miss affair – the only large-scale, organised attempt to bring new people into the world of open source is Google’s Summer of Code.
At the very least the current developments in the case of Diaspora are a reminder that free software is not doing enough to bring in new coding talent – especially women – or to think ahead in terms of passing on command. If these are not addressed, many other projects could be affected and afflicted with the kind of transition problems we are now seeing with Diaspora, especially as more of the key hackers pass into middle age and beyond, and begin to think about moving on.
Dave Neary on first contribution speed bumps:
I want to make clear – I am not picking on MediaWiki here. I rate the project well above average in the speed and friendliness with which I was helped at every turn. But they, like every project, have adopted tools to make it easier for regular contributors, and to help ensure that no patches get dropped on the floor because of poor processes. Here’s the $64,000 question: are the tools and processes which make it easier for regular contributors making it harder for first-time contributors?
Open hatch sank Port Authority’s $500G boat:
A $500,000 Port Authority patrol boat sank this month after a veteran police sergeant took the advice of a clueless civilian safety instructor — and opened a hatch while it was under water, The Post has learned.
Get involved
The OpenHatch wiki needs some love. Especially if you’re an experienced contributor to other wikis, be bold!