- who like AbiWord, and/or
- who'd like AbiWord even better "if only...", and/or
- who'd like to find a way to *help* make AbiWord a better product and are
looking for suggestions of what to do.
Some folks who are used to dealing with proprietary software companies
expect things to get done simply because they complained about them, but
more and more people understand that being Open Source means things happen
when everyone does their share.
Anyhow, to help facilitate that process, we're starting something called the
Project of the Week (or POW). Essentially this means that approximately
once a week, we'll send a message to the AbiWord developer mailing list
(abiword-dev) describing a single specific project that:
- needs to be done, and
- has been fairly well thought-through, but
- the core developers aren't going to get to anytime soon.
The goal is to describe the problem in sufficient detail that anyone with
the relevant experience can dive right in and start tackling it. Everyone
who's new to the team could use help getting started, and this is a focused
way to take advantage of the insights of a core developer who's already put
some thought into that problem.
In the past, we've tried to give this kind of detailed, focused starting
point to potential developers when they express interest in implementing a
particular feature. The change now is that we're going to be more proactive
about it, too.
To help identify these messages, the subject line will always start with
"POW --" (kind of like code checkin notices are accompanied by a "commit"
message). Among other things, this helps people sorting through the email
archives to locate old, unclaimed POWs which still need to be worked on,
along with any ensuing discussions about that project.
Then, when someone's ready to step up and commit to working on the project,
they can send a ZAP message to the dev list to claim it. I'm tempted to
suggest that the final checkin message for a completed POW has a SHAZAM
prefix, but hey, that's just me. :-)
Paul,
who read too many comic books as a child