Recognizing Contributors
Ok, I'm at it again. Trying to figure out the best way to recognize
contributors and participants within the OpenSolaris community. I
feel like a lot of people out there are doing a lot of work but are not
getting enough credit. This is not intentional, of course, but I think
it should be addressed now that we are open. Besides, I want to explore
this more deeply myself and see where it goes. I've been reading and
talking to people and taking notes. I've also touched on the issue
indirectly here
and here
(and I especially like Chris's comments), but I've never really
directly brought it up with the OpenSolaris community on the discuss
list. So we'll see what happens. If you feel like commenting, please
feel to chime in. All are welcome.
Posted by james governor on January 06, 2006 at 09:29 PM JST #
Posted by Jim Grisanzio on January 07, 2006 at 02:59 AM JST #
Jim, how about giving them a @opensolaris.org email address? I know some people that treasure their @apache.org addy.
The other thing is that you want to remember to keep the rules to an absolute minimum. You want the Very Best hackers out there to work on the code. These people are traditionally staunch non-conformists and generally dislike doing anything they see as pointless. For example: if you had a rule that said: "no email address in the code" then the hacker will think: "They had to make a rule for that? Silly people."
Instead, encourage very strong collaboration.
For the non-coders, their name and email, and/or web address on the documents they work on. For example, if there is a web page on the sun website, have a contact. See http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/, at the bottom, in contact. The guy's name links to http://www.w3.org/People/mimasa/, a page which has his email, and which he quite obviously authored himself.
Now, the w3 is not some fly-by-night group. Note the guy's email addy: "mimasa@w3.org" That's gotta have street cred. And the fact that his name appears on one of the principal pages for the HTML standard body for the Entire World has got to have some street cred too.
Also, in communications, use their full name. It really helps down the road when connecting the dots. If you say Matt worked on this function, it's not quite as effective as saying "Matthew Yardley wrote a function, it was great, Thanks Matt!!!"
It just seems a little bit more formal, a little bit more respectful, a bit less familiar, but I think in that sense formal is good too.
Posted by Christopher Mahan on January 07, 2006 at 12:14 PM JST #
Posted by eman on August 16, 2006 at 08:31 PM JST #