Recruiting Source Special Form of Software Development Method Used in XTLA

Masatake YAMATO Translated by Ryoko YAMATO Ideal Open Source Development

● Attracts many developers and users, which leads to the project growth.

● Ideal growing cycle: 1.First, source code is open to public. 2.Developers begin to join the project. 3.Functions and quality are improved. 4.Increase in the number of users catches the eyes of other developers. 5.More developers will join the project. 6.More users, as a result. Open Source Development in Reality ● Too many projects for the number of developers on earth. – The number of developers per project will not increase. – The number of users per project will not increase either. – Another similar project to be started by others; since the existence of the initial project is hardly known to people. – Similar projects fight over developers and users. – Each similar project is likely to remain imperfect.

● The whole category, which these projects belongs to, might fade. Ideal Project

Project leader

Developers

Users Dead­end Project

Project leader = Developer = User Ideal Category

Project B

Project A

Project C Mutual growth by competing each other Dead­end Category

● Users can't easily see which one is the best to try. ● Many projects are not ready for practical use. ● Developers can't see which project they should compete with. Dead­end Category

Even if you start another project to overcome the situation, your project will be hardly recognized in too many projects. Example of Dead­end Category : IDE

In case you don't know Eclipse, you have to check all 519 projects. Example of Dead­end Category : IDE

No more subdirectory here. You have to browse 26 pages. March 11, 2004 In the category of "Emacs Frontend for GNU Arch"

tla.el tilly.el xtla.el Milan Zamazal Martin Pool Stefan Reichör

Three projects were already in this niche category. This category is destined for dead­end, too? What can be done ? Outline

● Open Source Development method, in which you make source code open to public and wait for developers and users coming to you, cannot be a solution to prevent a category from becoming "dead end."

● Proposal for "Recruiting Source Development(RSD)" method where you invite other project members who already have their assets (experience, source code) to work together.

● Reporting the growth of XTLA project to which RSD was applied. To be covered in this presentation:

● Supportive software in this project – GNU Arch – QuickML

● Process of XTLA development

● Recruiting Source Development method Supportive software in RSD Distributed version control system GNU Arch CVS Arch exchange modifications Repository

l tal s Archive ins ion icat dif mo developer developer developer developer developer developer Distributed version control system GNU Arch (cont’d)

● No permission is needed to make a branch.

● Easy to create a mirror archive to publish your branch.

● Development at your own pace. – Little interference from others. – Cause little trouble to others.

● Relation to XTLA – XTLA covers up complex command line interface of Arch. – Source code of XTLA itself is managed in Arch archives. Lightweight mailing list system QuickML

● Run at QuickML.com

● Management tasks such as Subject: meeting creating mailing lists and To: [email protected] adding members can be done From: [email protected] Cc: [email protected], by just sending a mail. [email protected]

● Anyone in the mailing list Subject: add members can invite other people to To: [email protected] From: [email protected] the list. Cc: [email protected] Development process of XTLA project The first three months Why XTLA?

● I have been interested in distributed version control system since the failure to have gs­cjk patch merged to Ghostscript.

● I really liked pcl­cvs, the Emacs front­end to CVS.

● There had already been three projects of front­end development, so I did not think of starting another one by myself.

● After tring tla.el, tilly.el, and xtla.el, I found out xtla.el was the closest to what I was looking for.

● The author of xtla.el (hereafter Stefan) was also a developer of psvn, a Subversion interface for Emacs. First contact ● I wanted an Emacs frontend as soon as possible.

● To avoid this category from falling into dead­end, I decided to take part in one of the projects.

● xtla.el looked the most promising.

● March 15, 2004 ： Sent my self­introduction by e­mail to Stephan. His reply was "contribution welcome." I could get a feeling for his personality from his e­mail.

● March 18 : Sent my first patch to show my enthusiasm. Stefan merged it on that day and released the new version. Mailing List started ● March 21 ： Stefan requested savannah.gnu.org to register our project. Screening process was delayed.

● April 10 ： Launched a mailing list at QuickML.com as a temporary one. – Stefan, Matthiew Moy, and I became the ML member. – So far, XTLA project had three times as many developers as the other two front­end development projects did.

● (March 15 : Matthiew had already made a contribution to XTLA) Distributed development for XTLA by XTLA ● (Since Stefan had not set up an archive­mirror for managing XTLA source code yet, the rest of two sent patches by e­mails.)

● All of three set out to open each one’s archive­mirror to public from April 8, and finished it by April 15.

● Various XTLA functions needed for distributed development were implemented one after another. – Setting up mirrors – Picking up changesets from other repositories.

● XTLA became the tool to develop XTLA itself. Recruiting developers ● How can we have more, skilled developers in our project?

● Is there anyone who wants Emacs interface for GNU Arch, can use Emacs lisp, and knows about GNU Arch?

● April 19 ： Sent an e­mail to the author of tla.el, Milan Zamazal, to ask if we could work together. He accepted our offer, and was added to the mailing list.

● April 21 ： Matthiew sent an e­mail to the author of tilly.el, Martin Pool. Here again, his reply was "yes" and he joined the mailing list. Using web search results for recruiting developers

● Obtaining resources (developers, source code, know­hows) by just sending a mail! Getting a taste of success, I used Google web search to look for developers. Keywords: tla front­end emacs ­xtla

● May 8: Contacted with the author of xxx.el(anonymous), Mr. Foobar(anonymous). But it was unsuccessful.

● May 16 : Succeeded in recruiting the author of mst­arch.el, Mark Triggs.

● May 17 : Matthiew invited Christian Neukirchen, the author of nbbba.el. He showed his interest, but he was not active in coding. May 17, 2004 The category of “Emacs frontend for GNU Arch"

Stefan Reichör Matthiew Moy, Martin Pool, Mark Triggs, Robert Widhopf­Fenk*, Masatake YAMATO, Milan Zamazal

XTLA xxx.el Mr.Foobar

The developers of XTLA enriched this niche category.

*Joined to XTLA without being recruited. After that...

● Enough developers that we wanted to have agreed to merge their code and work together, so there was no need to recruit another any more.

● The end of April 2004 ： Set up the project at gna.org. Gradually went back to Open Source development style.

● May 24, 2005 : Version 1.0 was out. Recruiting Source Development Method Recruiting Source Development (RSD)

● A Special form of Open Source Development(OSD)

● Taking action to recruit developers, not just waiting for them to join the project.

● From "to be chosen" to "to choose" – OSD ： People decide whether to join or not by evaluating publicly available source code and its project theme. – RSD ： WE decide whether to recruit him/her for our project by evaluating his/her source code and project theme. Selection of developers

● Do they have enough knowledge and skills in the area? (example: Emacs lisp, GNU arch)

● Can they share the development goals with you? (in this case: Did they know about pcl­cvs and want to develop a similar project?)

● Are they willing to cooperate in order to achieve the goal as soon as possible? When contacting to a prospective developer*

● Carefully review the developer's work, and clearly explain to him/her the significance of merging.

● However, do not put so much pressure on that developer.

*From the interview with Mr. Foobar After recruiting ● Encourage the recruited person to develop actively.

● Recruiting activity should not be time­consuming for recruiters.

● Helpful software ： – QuickML: Easy to use, and it provides a smooth process from recruiting to inviting a prospective developer to the mailing list. – GNU Arch

● Developers can work at their own pace. ● Developers can look into peer's work very easily. Conditions to apply RSD

● Members agree that they want their products to be used by many people, and provide it as soon as possible.

● The category should be young (not mature). – RSD works well only among young projects. – Offer to merge from mature project to young project →threat. – Offer to merge from young project to mature project→ridiculous

● Members share the development goal. – When recruiting, it is easy to communicate using proper words. – Development speed may differ, but all developers look at the same direction. Conclusion and future issues

● Recruiting Source Development was proposed.

● The development process of XTLA was introduced as the project managed by RSD method.

● RSD method is not a perfect solution to the whole “dead­end” category problem. However, I would like to raise the awareness of this problem and introduce this method to the world. Acknowledgments

The author would like to express his thanks to...

● Shigeru AOSASA who encouraged me to publish the idea of RSD.

● XTLA developers who gave me a chance to go through this advanced development process.

● Mr. Foobar who agreed willingly to be interviewed by the author.