[Bf-committers] Module Owner teams - proposal to extend & formalize it more

[PabloVazquez.org]

Great idea indeed! I feel it has been always been like this, but now is
official!

Count me in if I can be of any help.


--
Pablo Vazquez
CG Artist - Blender Foundation Certified Trainer
Twitter: @venomgfx <http://twitter.com/venomgfx>
Blender Network: blendernetwork.org/pablovazquez
Email: contact at pablovazquez.org
Website: pablovazquez.org <http://www.pablovazquez.org>


On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Jonathan Williamson <jonathan at cgcookie.com
> wrote:

> As an artist I think this is a great idea. All the developers do a great
> job but sometimes the artist feedback is needed to better develop tools and
> features that fit into the artist/production workflow.
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, June 11, 2013, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > ----  "How do I get a feature in Blender" ----
> >       (or, who is making Blender anyway?)
> >
> > I'm a very firm supporter of empowering people who *do*, the ones who can
> > get work done or who have proven to be realizing work before.
> >
> > That reflects in our "Module Owner" organization. Developers who actively
> > contribute to Blender are also the ones who can make decisions in that
> area.
> > Module teams currently have owners (who can work quite independently) and
> > team members (who need to ensure an owner is being informed and agrees
> with
> > work).
> > Module teams accept responsibility for bug fixing, patch and code
> reviews,
> > and help out new developers in the area.
> >
> > In practice - we're really quite awesome in this regard - the module
> teams
> > have good connections with users. However, I think we're not functioning
> > optimally here. With Blender growing, with more people being active, and
> > with all the high quality demands and requests, we should consider to
> > extend our Module organization now.
> >
> > My proposal is to ask each module team to invite at least one involved
> > user to formally join the module teams. The current owners/teams can do
> > this all based on their current networks, and can decide for each
> > individual whether it's an "owner" or "member" role. For bigger modules,
> > having an artist co-owner is really preferred though.
> >
> > The choice for such users-members can be simply based on the same
> > principle as we do for developers - based on actual achievements in the
> > area and shown interest to be involved.  We can keep module teams
> > self-appointing too, owners decide themselves who's joining. Only when
> > needed, the 'project admins' will interfere in the process.
> >
> > The consequences of this proposal can be quite minimal - it just means
> you
> > need to get agreement on feature decisions with one more person. Better
> > would be if the new user-members then also actively participate in all
> > discussions, feature proposal reviewing, release logs and communicating
> > decisions when were they made. It will help developers a lot, to offload
> > work to others especially. :)
> >
> > I also want to emphasise that we currently informally already do this a
> > lot. A great example is how motion tracking was implemented with artist
> > Sebastian Koenig as 'owner' too.
> > We also already have several mailing lists with activity for areas as
> vfx,
> > cycles, python, robotics and animation. We can extend this when needed
> > easily.
> >
> > I know it's not democracy I propose, I really don't think voting is going
> > to get Blender further anytime. Getting more people involved, and having
> > them empowered _is_ helping though. It's still going to be organized
> chaos,
> > and will go with a lot of squeaky wheel greasing. But hey, that's open
> > source dynamics!
> >
> > For more about the current owner teams:
> > wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Module_Owners
> >
> > Note: the current "project admin" team is just three people now. That
> role
> > hasn't been needed really in the past years, but I'd welcome to have a
> > great (UI) designer member there. This is going to be based on practical
> > involvement & achievements too, based on those who helped out with
> Blender.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -Ton-
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org <javascript:;>   -   www.blender.org
> > Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> > Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Williamson
> http://cgcookie.com
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