Work-In-Progress Day (WIP-Day)
New things are happening these days – Kamikaze is officially released,
new hardware platforms are being added and there will soon come a move
to the 2.6.22 kernel.
It can be overwhelming to keep track of all these new developments, and
difficult for individuals who wants to participate active to find out
where to begin?
I recently started a thread on the openwrt-devel mailing-list about how to
do something about some of these problems. As a result of various input
and respons to my idea I would like to suggest a new initiative with the title:
Work-In-Progress Day (WIP-Day)
It is the intention to organize a monthly working day (24 hours) similar
to the Gentoo projects bugday:
www.gentoo.org/proj/en/bugday/index.xml
The Gentoo bugday is a monthly "day" (24 hours during a weekend)
focussed on fixing "bugs" in both distribution and packages.
In practice it takes place on IRC, and the aim is to make it possible
for everyone to participate in fixing a "bug" (independent of skills and
experience). There is an official list of "bugs" which is posted before
the day starts, and various developers/committers help people who take
part with learning how to do this (this was the very short version of
what goes on). As it is stated on the Gentoo website:
“... every first saturday of a month, a bugday is hosted on
#gentoo-bugs, on irc.freenode.net. During the whole day, users pick bugs
from the list presented on bugday.gentoo.org and, with the possible help
of attending devs, try and fix them....”
It is the aim of the Gentoo bugday to function as a way of helping
people to participate in the activities of the project and at the same
time to be a social forum.
I would like to suggest that something similar was introduced as part of
the activities of OpenWrt? Though, I have to admit that I believe the
concept itself would have to be changed somewhat.
There are many different things which can be worked on: Hardware
platforms, porting of packages, documentation, localization and so
forth. I would like to suggest that a needs/offers model is followed
instead.
One person, or group could offer to work on porting on packages –
teaching/helping others to do this – while similar others could could
state a need for working on a specific platform (or device).
This initiative could start-out with using the forum for posting of
offers/needs and host the “day” itself on #openwrt-devel, combined with
posting 'what are we doing' emails on openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org –
these emails could then be merged together into a monthly newsletter.
When to begin with this new activity?
I would like to suggest that a first WIP-Day could take place either after the
official move to the 2.6.22 kernel or (just to pick a date) saturday the 30. of June
from UTC 12.00 and 24 hours ahead.
How to begin?
People/members who are interested can begin with adding a list of 'offers and needs'
to this forum-thread, and take part in deciding when such a first WIP-Day should
take place - and basicly just discuss the idea :-)
glp