Task:Motivating people

Recently there has been some discussion about what motivates people, how more people can get involved and how to encourage people to get involved.

While the discussion is certainly very lively, and people certainly have come up with a lot of ideas, the forum may not be the best way to organize potential solutions. For that reason, this wiki page may be used to brainstorm some ideas about what could motivate people (could be you, could be other people) to get more involved in Maemo-related (not necessarily Nokia!) projects. There is one twist about contributing to this wiki: Anyone who contributes a problem or something that keeps them from getting involved, must also try to offer a solution. It's ok to be optimistic, but also try to be realistic. Also, there are sometimes more than one solution to the same problem. Don't stop brainstorming about ways to fix problems just because someone else has brought up a solution!

Contents

[edit] API Breaks

  • Problem: Some people are worried about sudden API breaks in the future forcing them to rewrite their code.
  • Solution: Nokia could commit to giving a certain amount of warning before breaking public APIs.

[edit] Money

  • Problem: Some people aren't motivated to code for Maemo because they're not making money off of it.
  • Solution 1: Would it be possible for Nokia to put up some bounties for projects that they feel are suited to the community and that they aren't working on internally?
  • Solution 2: Nokia (or maemo.org?) could setup a centralized bounty system so that users could post bounties for certain projects.
  • Solution 3: maemo.org hires!, hire developers to develop components chosen by the community, already seen with debmaster, the people running maemo.org, etc.
  • Solution 4: How about an app store like for a popular phone? I know it sounds cliche, but I really believe many developers are there because it is SO easy to have the potential to make some modest amount of money.

[edit] Don't know where to start

  • Problem: It's hard for me to get involved because I don't know what needs to be done.
  • Solution: Create a subforum where developers can make requests for assistance (Need artist for new icon, please test this new release, translators needed, etc.)

[edit] Development tools are challenging to setup

  • Problem: The larger the barrier to getting a working development environment, the fewer contributors
  • Solution: Productize the eclipse development environment - no more alpha or beta, make it feature complete and simple to use. Can the community contribute to this?
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