The Community Environment

In the first post I wrote about “environment that permits innovation” and now I will share my thoughts about community environment in Symbian Foundation. What kind of “environment” do we have in Symbian community? Is the current environment supportive, encouraging, friendly, safely or respectful? Do members feel that they are respected and they get support when needed? If not so, their contributions may be appreciated in other open source communities.

Respect

Open source communities are meritocracies and every member wants to build their social status in the community. Same comes with the Symbian Foundation: members are building their creditability in the community and they are contributing different ways. Thanks to Nokia and other big companies who have contributed a lot to Symbian Foundation and making this community possible. They have gained their statuses and respect.

But then we have “foot soldiers” in the community who are contributing error fixes, fix proposals, small things that create Symbian platform better. It seems that they are forgotten or even worse; their contributions are not notified at all. If those foot soldiers does not get feedback, support or nobody encourages them they will use their valuable time elsewhere.

Support

Since Symbian Foundation is quite young open source community members may need more support. Support is needed when starting developing with Symbian, how do I contribute my code to package, how can I get contact to package owner, basic things for those who have been working in open source communities before. It needs also good attitude from community leaders when these questions are raised.

One form of support (and communication) is guidelines that tell for example how contributions are done to some package. I would say that I need guideline for that purposes, I am not sure how to contribute code in some package (of course it would be better if I stay away from code). I have read that it should be easy, but still I am not sure.

Code of Conduct

I have two kids aged under four years and they are sometimes very adorable but most of the time they are little menaces. They need limits and rules how to behave with other kids, in home, in shop, in restaurant and so forth. I think that good open source communities should have also some kind of “code of conduct” that determines community rules and values. In shortly, if you follow these rules the the collaboration in community  will be easier. Good example is Ubuntu’s code of conduct which determines “ground rules” for community way of working.

Well, that was it what I was thinking during this week. You know how to comment and I encourage to that activity. If you do not want to comment publicly you can send e-mail.