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fswd!developers
+
+ Once you have gotten the project started, you have gotten over the
+ most difficult hurdles in the development process of your
+ program. Laying a firm foundation is essential, but the development
+ process itself is equally important and provides an equal number of
+ opportunities for failure. In the next two sections, I will and
+ cover running a project by discussing how to maintain a project
+ rhough interactions with developers and with users.
+
+
+
+ The difference between free software development and propriety
+ software development is th developer base. As the leader of a free
+ software project, you need to attract and keep developers in a way
+ that leaders of proprietary software projects sipmly don't have to
+ worry about. As the person leading development of a free
+ software project, you must harness the work of fellow developers by
+ making responsible decisions and by and by choosing not to make
+ decisions responsibly. You have to direct developers without being
+ overbearing or bossy. You need to strive to earn respect and never
+ forget to give it.
+
+
Delegating Work
+
+
+ By now, you've hypothetically followed me through the writing of a
+ piece of software, the creation of a website and a skeleton of
+ documentation and functionality and we've gone ahead and (as will
+ be discussed in ) released it to the
+ rest of the world. Times passes and people hopefully becoming
+ interested and people want to help and patches begin flowing in.
+
+
+
+ Like the parent of any child who grows up, it's now time to wince
+ and smile and do most difficult thing in any parents life: It's
+ time to let go.
+
+
+
+ Delegation is the politcal way of describing this process of
+ letting go.
It is the process of handing
+ responsibility, and power, over aspects of your project to other
+ reponsible developers. It is difficult for anyone who has invested
+ a large deal of time and energy into a project but it essential
+ for the growth of any free software project. One person can only
+ do so much.
+
+
+
+ As your project progresses, you will notice people who put
+ signfigant amounts of time and effort into your project. These
+ will be the people submitting the most patches, posting most on
+ the mailing lists, engaging in long email discussions. It is your
+ responsiblity to contact these people and to try and shift some of
+ the power and responsiblity of project maintainer toward
+ them. There are several easy weays you can do this:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Allow a larger group of people write access to your
+ CVS reponsitory and make real efforts towards rule by a
+ committee.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Publicly appoint someone as the release manager for a
+ specific release. A relase manager is usually
+ responsible for coordinating testing, encforcing a code freeze,
+ being responsible for stability and quality control, packaging
+ up the software, and placing it in the approrpriate places to
+ be downloaded.
+
+
+
+ This use of the release manager is a good way to give yourself
+ a break and to shift the responsibility for accepting and
+ rejecting patches to somenoe else. It is a good way of very
+ clearly defining a chunk of work on the project as belonging to
+ a certain person and its a great way of giving yourself a break.
+
+
+
+
+
+ Delegating control of an entire branch.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Accepting and Rejecting Patches
+
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Avoiding the Code Cram Effect
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- Accepting and Rejecting Patches
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