Unity

Bug #882274
Comment #34

Comment 34 for bug 882274

Revision history for this message

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup) wrote on 2011-10-31:

#34

Let me put a word in here as a developer on the dx team.

I receive ~1 bug email per minute in all 24 hours per day. That's ~1440 emails per day; and that's just counting the ones from Launchpad. I filter them and skim them to work with them as effectively as possible, but as you can expect stuff does slip through. I try my best to reply sensibly where applicable - but easy math explains why I need to be very selective in where I spend time writing up a reply. - And there is also code to be written, lest not forget! ;-)

Considering also that I subscribe to several high volume mailing lists, and spend more or less all my wake time in a range of IRC channels; it can not come as a surprise that someone not using all their wake time similarly will have a (very) hard time following what's going on. Sure, some things are discussed privately, but the majority of the information flow is actually in public - due to our distributed nature it just takes an extraordinary amount of effort to follow it.

For people (like myself ~2 years ago) only following the mainstream info points like news sites, blogs, twitter, forums, and the occasional LP bug, it is true that they are partially left in the dark. They are maybe seeing 2% of the total information flow. The Community Team (and news sites) are doing a grand job of trying to better this situation, but there's only so much they can do.

Let me finish off by noting how I've seen people still succeed despite my grim outlines above - community champions who've shown that it is indeed possible :-)

The common patterns are : 1) Spending lots of time on Unity-related projects launchpad, triaging bugs, commenting, and most importantly *proposing solutions* (patches, icons, wireframes, etc). 2) Start small - the mentioned bug about moving the launcher is a *big* deal - having complex ramifications for the user experience and being technically challenging. 3) Engage on IRC. Be friendly, pro-active, and persevering in talking to developers and designers on IRC. I can assure you they want to help (if they don't respond don't assume they are evil - see first paragraph ;-)). 4) Be focused. Find your main area of interest and stick to that. You'll never get to follow everything that goes into the distro. Even the flood of information I read each day only gives me a small window into what's related for Unity - but Unity, in the grander scope of things, is only small bolt in between the countless bits and bobs that make up Ubuntu.

Let me put a word in here as a developer on the dx team.

Let me finish off by noting how I've seen people still succeed despite my grim outlines above - community champions who've shown that it is indeed possible :-)

The common patterns are : 1) Spending lots of time on Unity-related projects launchpad, triaging bugs, commenting, and most importantly *proposing solutions* (patches, icons, wireframes, etc). 2) Start small - the mentioned bug about moving the launcher is a *big* deal - having complex ramifications for the user experience and being technically challenging. 3) Engage on IRC. Be friendly, pro-active, and persevering in  talking to developers and designers on IRC. I can assure you they want to help (if they don't respond don't assume they are evil - see first paragraph ;-)). 4) Be focused. Find your main area of interest and stick to that. You'll never get to follow everything that goes into the distro. Even the flood of information I read each day only gives me a small window into what's related for Unity - but Unity, in the grander scope of things, is only small bolt in between the countless bits and bobs that make up Ubuntu.