Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Pavel Stehule
Subject Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?
Date
Msg-id CAFj8pRCRLte7Cu=Zo3YtVDhy6cSjBO24g0u3bvtNiQi-tRpy9A@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?  (Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?  (David Rowley <david.rowley@2ndquadrant.com>)
Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?  (Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@BlueTreble.com>)
List pgsql-general


2016-01-06 8:08 GMT+01:00 Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com>:


On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:41 AM, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com> wrote:
On 1/5/16 10:03 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 1/5/2016 5:31 PM, Jim Nasby wrote:
IMHO, the real problem here is not simply a CoC, it is that the
Postgres community doesn't focus on developing the community itself.
The closest we come to "focus" is occasional talk on -hackers about
how we need more developers. There is no formal
discussion/leadership/coordination towards actively building and
strengthening our community. Until that changes, I fear we will always
have a lack of developers. More importantly, we will continue to lack
all the other ways that people could contribute beyond writing code.
IE: the talk shouldn't be about needing more developers, it should be
about needing people who want to contribute time to growing the
community.


That sounds like a bunch of modern marketing graduate mumbojumbo to
me.    The postgres community are the people who actually support it on
the email lists and IRC, as well as the core development teams, and
INMO, they are quite strong and effective.     when you start talking
about social marketing and facebook and twitter and stuff, thats just a
bunch of feelgood smoke and mirrors.    The project's output is what
supports it, not having people going out 'growing community', that is
just a bunch of hot air.   you actively 'grow community' when you're
pushing worthless products (soda pop, etc) based on slick marketing
plans rather than actually selling something useful.
.
Then why is it that there is almost no contribution to the community other than code and mailing list discussion?

Why is the infrastructure team composed entirely of highly experienced code contributors, of which there are ~200 on the planet, when there are literally 100s of thousands (if not millions) of people out there that could do that work (and could probably do it better if it's what they do for a living, no offense to the efforts of the infrastructure team).

Why is there a lack of developers? And a serious lack of code reviewers?

I agree with Jim, something is wrong, I see our developers community isn't growing and getting older. There is no formal problem to start contribute, but steep learning curve and lack of mentoring practice scare people.

The CoC doesn't solve it. We do on mature, stable, pretty complex code - use C (not JavaScript or Java).  This isn't hobby project or student project.

Taking new developers needs the hard individual work with any potential developer/student. I see as interesting one point - PostgreSQL extensibility - the less experienced developer can write extension, there can be interesting experimental extensions that can be supported without risk of unstability of core code. Can be nice to allow to write not only C language extensions. Then the Postgres can be used on universities and in some startup companies - and it can increase the number of active developers. My very talented colleague doesn't write to Postgres due C language. He like to write planner in lisp or erlang. Or like to play in these languages. C is barrier for younger people. 

I don't afraid about community - I see some new faces from Russia and other countries. There is 1/10000 ratio of Postgres developers and Postgres users. Hard to change it. Almost all developers write code for job not for hobby.

Regards

Pavel


 

Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com


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