[gentoo-science] Re: Gentoo Science project status

[George Shapovalov <george@gentoo.org>]

Hi devs,

First, I want to apologise, as many of you will get two copiess of this email 
and some will even see it three, this one time. I, however, wanted to make 
sure everybody has all the relevant addresses.

Second, indeed I think we should move this discussion to the list, rather than 
sending emails with bunch of CCs. I would like to remind everybody, that 
there is a mailing list: gentoo-science@lists.gentoo.org, which is supposed 
to be used for more or less general discussions related to our project and 
especially for stuff like that. Donnie: nice reminder of the sci alias, but I 
think the list is suited better for this purpose. First, it is free for all 
to sign up, so we need not take special care of interested/involved nondevs. 
More importantly, this way the discussion will not interfer with bug reports 
(and the other way around).

Wednesday, 13. May 2009, Andrey Kislyuk Ви написали:
> - Current projects. All active developers, please reply to this
> message with a list of any major items you're working on, so we can
> put them in the status report. For instance, I'm working on the
> bioperl-1.6.0 update and a few big troublesome sci-biology packages
> including ncbi-tools++, gbench, wgs-assembler and cytoscape. I know
> Markus is working on the Octave 3 stuff. What else?
Thanks for the reports sent so far. However I would like to expand this 
request a bit - it would really be nice to get a headcount. Therefore, I 
would like to ask all devs who are still involved in Scientific Gentoo to 
respond, shortly outlining the (intended) range of "responsibilities" and 
expected activity level, - even if not very active at the moment. Please 
answer to the list, so that we can keep track of the responces in one concise 
thread. Actually, I'll branch the discussion then and will create a subthread 
for this in a moment..

After collecting the responce we can update the webpage - I could do it or 
somebody else willing could step up ;).

I'll start with myself:
> - Selecting a lead. George Shapovalov is our current lead. George, if
> you're active, we'll need your help with the status update, otherwise
> we need to select a new lead. Please reply to nominate people or with
> any thoughts (we could be anarchists like the python herd and go
> without a lead!)
Well, I am here, although I am not working on any specific package(s), mostly 
reacting to organizational issues. I was indeed rather quiet last few month, 
however we have seen a steady flow of new contributors to science overlay - I 
had to do mediate one almost montly for the last year or so. Which implies, 
that we should have a good pool of potential devs, however, as always, this 
is not guaranteed - people need to stay active, not just show activity once.

As for my lead status - either is fine with me. I try to react and organize 
when something comes up, however, I am afraid, I will not have much time in 
the coming year or two for more active actions (have to push out a couple of 
papers and change position). In this regard, you could call what was going on 
an anarchy - people going about their regular routines and taking care of 
their areas of interest and organizing when necessary, but I would rather 
call it "pragmatic handling" ;). If there are some ideas about some projects 
it would be interesting to discuss them, however, as I mentioned, it has been 
quiet lately in this regard. I'd say, the real need that we may have is 
organizing another wave of recruitment. Thus I definitly wellcome the request 
for recruitment status:
> - Recruiting and recruit status. If you're being recruited or are in
> charge of a recruit, please reply so we have a head count and let us
> know the ETA for becoming a dev if you have one. 
but again, would like to expand it slightly. As the original message will only 
reach the people on the original CC list, I'd like to ask anybody who knows a 
prospective applicant/interested user to forward this rectuitment request 
correspondingly. Please ask them to subscribe to gentoo-science mailing list 
as well. Some of the old participants might even still be on the list in 
fact :).

> We need to add a 
> staffing needs section to the project page. Do we have specific
> recruiting requests? 
On the updating the recruitment page. IIRC we were discussing (somewhat 
transient discussion I must admit) this some half a year ago (with bicataly 
and somebody else on irc?). The general feeling was that our staffing needs 
are a bit different from the general Gentoo populace, as people who make a 
good fit would be proficient in (or at least familiar with) some or other 
scientific discipline. Also, such people usually have a crapload of other 
duties on their hands and/or are somewhat shy in terms of active 
participation in geek discussions/communities. Therefore we considered the 
overlay as the most promising recruitment avenue and I think we could try to 
check if any of its regualrs are ripe enough for joining with a full dev 
status. 

Nonetheless, putting the request in the open should not hart. I would, 
however, urge whoever is going to write recruitment request to be careful 
about wording. Weer there any specific plans - who and when was going to do 
this or should I write something up? (perhaps in ~2 weeks, after headcount 
somewhat settles; nug me if I slip off the radar again - I am almost always 
there, just silent).

> We also need a tracker bug for science 
> contributors who are potential recruits. 
There is one such, still open, but did not see much activity for over a year. 
Perhaps we cpuld create a new one with less text :), although that one is not 
that long. But it should be better organized - we need a separate bugs 
branching off - one per recruitment case. In fact, we just need the recruits, 
as was discussed above, and this is the main problem I'd say. Then we can 
simply add standard recruitment bugs as dependencies. What may need to go in 
the bug itself are some org discussions - summaries of which could be 
attached to keep track of things.

Oh, the bug; its #138021:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=138021


George