Myth of a core #Drupal team /via @greg_harvey
And the core Drupal team wonder why they don't get more help from all the Drupal contractors out there.
This was a comment in a thread on Greg Harvey's blog about duplicate issues. I see similar sentiments a lot. Here's the comment I left:
There is no core team. That's the myth. There are people who do more work, and there are version maintainers ... but other than that, it's whoever pitches in.
So, try not to think about "them" or "the core team" -- because it's simply a group of people that have decided to put more time in. The exact people grow and shrink depending on time and interest level, and usually per core version.
How do you get involved with Drupal core? Pick an area that interests you, and submit a patch (or review a patch, or test a patch, or design a mock up, or write some documentation). The barrier to entry for that first post is surprisingly low. And yes, from there on you have to put bit more time in - because there are many many "single post" contributors, who for whatever reason, don't follow through.
But it's worth it, and I encourage you to start by starting. Who knows, you might become part of the core Drupal team :P
Comments
had no idea
I had no idea the team behind Drupal was as such, so cowboy-esque.
I knew that Ubercart was basically the two core fellows and whomever happens by on altruism or contract.
That's really surprising... still, it's only proof of how far along a community can bring a chunk of software.
I wonder if this sort of activity will ever lead to a market breaking operating system...
There is no core team.
Of course there is a core team...
sure it's a lose team - but there is undoubtedly a hardcore of Drupal developers who know each other by reputation and collaborate to a greater or lesser extent
This isn't a bad thing.
Not quite sure why you're telling me how to contribute....
Presumably you assume that I don't know.
I did contribute to D7 (patch to add date and time types to the db layer) but couldn't be bothered to stick around and argue about whether it was a good idea with people who knew far less than me but still treated me like a newb.
So I let webchick push it through.
Interestingly (and related to Gregs original post) webchick seems to have become aware of the issue when I posted a duplicate!
Similarly I posted a patch for WYSIWYG API to syncronise WYIWYG settings an filters - but declined to participate further in the project when it became apparent the project has a lowest common denominator approach which wasn't compatible with my patch.
Not targeted at you
Sean -- again, sorry if this came off as pointing at you. Your comment was just a jumping off point for a larger discussion.
"but couldn't be bothered to stick around and argue about whether it was a good idea with people who knew far less than me but still treated me like a newb" - totally understand. I've found a lot of value from putting in the time to prove myself. Not everyone sees the value in it, and so drops off. Everyone finds different ways into groups - having a deep discussion with someone like Crell about the DB layer would likely have been more useful than trying to duke it out in the forums, where it is very hard to tell the difference (as I mentioned) between a one off and someone skilled like yourself.
Core contributing
Firstly, thanks for the blog link and thanks for commenting over there too. Appreciate it.
To be fair to Sean, who I actually know personally (he's a London-based Drupal/PHP contractor who I've worked with on jobs before) he's not a one-post contributor. Without actually reviewing his posts on Drupal.org, but having spoken to him at length about these things over a pint of ale in the pub, he's had a few long debates on issues about which he feels passionate involving the way Drupal is structured and has been left with the impression the doors to serious contrib are barred.
That said, I agree with you 100% - we shouldn't be promoting a them and us mentality within the community. Core development should be, and IS, an open thing. Though I'm not 100% convinced the barrier for entry is as low as you think.
The problem is, it takes a surprising amount of time to familiarise yourself with the (to the best of my knowledge, unwritten) roadmap for Drupal, mainly by trying to unravel the issue queue. And if you get it wrong/bring up something previously discussed a year ago/suggest something's a bug that the incumbent maintainer thinks is really "by design", etc. then it can get tough (depending on who you find yourself dealing with).
For example, just to work out where contributions should be directed to expedite zip packaging of Drupal modules involved reading the background history of *six* (long!) issues spanning nearly 5 years of discussion and work. That's before I could even think about maybe getting involved. (Fortunately dww has been a star and really led me by the hand and got me up to date, which is wonderful, but not everyone's like that.) So I would say that's not really a "low barrier" for entry. That requires a significant investment of time. And, in some cases, woe betide s/he who goes in having *not* read the history. Which is a large part of Sean's beef.
There are, of course, more trivial patches that can be reviewed in isolation, issues without dependencies that can be easily contributed to, etc. - but most of the deep core stuff is a real spaghetti of issues, all inter-related, and unless you've lived in those issue queues for a few years and have the picture in your head, working out what the heck is going on is not easy.
Complex issues are complex
Greg -- specific issues may have lots of unravelling needed. I would argue that .zip packaging is a pretty big thing to tackle.
I obviously don't know Sean's background. My comment about one post contribution was meant to hi-light the common case that "the swarm" of community members often have to deal with, not say anything about Sean.
Any "big" issue is something that is going to take time to delve into ("let's put a WYSIWYG in core!"). One of the Twitter responses was "I contributed a core patch once. Was pretty simple". *That's* the kind of activity I want to showcase - you CAN start like that, and for simple issues, it's simple.
Main point: there is no core team, just people that care and keep at it, and you can be one too, if you put the time in.
Of course
You're totally right - the main point is the one that matters.
I'm just wondering if there are steps we can take to make it easier/less frustrating to put the time in? For example, look at what dww did here:
http://drupal.org/node/11416#comment-1950656
That's awesome! If that were "standard", or there were some mechanism to make it easy for developers to nodereference blocking issues from another issue, things would get a HELLUVALOT easier, even for joining in on complex issues.
I'm getting thinking here. I don't know if this has been discussed before, but what if there was a way to auto-generate a summary of a complex issue like dww did manually there? This could be a huge win from the perspective of upping the contribution rate by making it easier to delve in. =)
Although it's different,
Although it's different, there's this - http://drupal.org/node/569552 which at the moment looks like it'd be implemented as an 'issue summary' field. CCK isn't yet installed on Drupal.org, but some kind of nodereference in either direction from issues would be great. There's a lot more issues now, and one way we deal with that is to try to keep individual issues focused on one specific thing - but that in turn can lead to more issues as big things get split up into smaller ones.
I must say, although I agree
I must say, although I agree with this - it is unlikely for anyone outside of very core development to know this. It is quite unimaginable for such a effort - to have no dedicated group of involved people.
We will always have this sentiment unless we promote that we are not.
How?
How can we help promote this?
I think, as more regional / smaller shops adopt Drupal (putting more load on "core") we need to focus on getting them to contribute in different ways.
Some kind of recognition a
Some kind of recognition a shop is working actively on Drpal core, perhaps?
Yes
This is the beginning of something interesting. Basically, tying work on core to a more hilighted position on Drupal.org -- which leads to more commercial work.
Maybe even "contributor of the week - core" and contributor of the week - contrib".
webchick's core contributor
webchick's core contributor profiles seemed like a good way to dispel the 'core team' myth but I think she's been busy recently - http://www.webchick.net/contributor-spotlight
Another thing that's a real problem, is that to the extent that there is a core team (regular contributors, subsystem maintainers (these are not always the same group...)) this is extremely poorly documented - so it's hard for new people to know who to ask if they're interested in working in specific areas. http://drupal.org/node/621618 would help with that at least a little bit.