shout out

[mark]

Denise and I were at the Open Source Convention (OSCON) in San Jose this past week. One of the really interesting themes we kept running into is that people are really starting to rebel against the established order of how Open Source projects are traditionally run. The old mentality of projects being hard to get involved with (so many rules, so difficult!) is coming under scrutiny and sometimes outright criticism. People are really starting to look around for other ways of doing things.

Following from that, this week we had a lot of good conversations with people about how Dreamwidth is doing things. In particular, about how you (the developers) have organized a training community, IRC channel, and the ways in which you've started working together and producing code that is every week being committed and put live on the site.

People are amazed. When we told them "yes, the majority of our developers were very, very rusty or had never touched Perl in their lives, and they're writing much of our code" there was a bunch of "oh my god, really?" type responses. Yes, really. It's amazing, and I want to make sure that all of you know that. What you've done, what you're doing, is hands down one of the most exciting things happening on Open Source community development right now, period.

And I don't mean just on this project, or just in the world of LJ clones, but around the world -- all of it. People are starting to realize that there are people out there that want to help with their projects, but those people don't feel they can because the projects make it so hard. Dreamwidth is proving that making it easy and supporting new developers is absolutely the right thing to do, and every project out there should be considering how better to enable the so-called babydevs.

So: thank you. Thank you all for being awesome, for being a huge part of why this site is growing, why we got mentioned in three separate talks at this conference, and why we will succeed. Each of you is awesome, and I am thankful for you being here.

Comments

Re: still in training

[foxfirefey]

Don't underestimate mark and denise's commitment to the code and DW's running. Keeping advertisers out doesn't take much effort for them--all their work on the code and DW's maintenance does!

[denise]

+1. We have the most passionate, most committed team I could hope for, and it's absolutely fabulous to see y'all start to get that recognition. :)

[zarhooie]

This is the first Open Source project that I've been involved with (peripherally and kinda directly), and it just makes *sense* the way you're going about things. You're taking time to invest in your future, not just whipping out code wham bam thank you paying customers. You're passionate about your product and you're passionate about your customers, but you're also passionate about how your customers interact with your product. That speaks *volumes* for the sustainability of this project and for the future of open source developing.

[yvi]

<3

[I also love how international it can be - I hope to see more devs from all over the world in the future]

[damned_colonial]

Hear hear. I'd love us to talk more about how to achieve this, especially from places outside of North America/Europe/Australia.

[yvi]

I haven't noticed many Europeans except for British people yet, actually. Not many people from non-English-speaking countries in general, which is of course expected in an English-speaking environment, but I'd still love to see a bit of a change there :)

[though I love my Nothern-American/Australian friends, some more people I could maybe meet one of these days would be nice :)]

[pauamma]

/me waves an eyestalk.

[yvi]

*high fives*

[damned_colonial]

There are a bunch of DW volunteers in Europe, mostly the UK: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111979448437539366431.000466850d3d0fb9b7b8a&ll=56.968936,8.041992&spn=12.489276,39.506836&z=5

[yvi]

Which is what I said :) That lonely bicycle there on the other side of the North Sea from everyone else is me :)

*needs to recruit Continental Europe*

[afuna]

Echoing what zarhooie said, a lot of what Dreamwidth does just *makes sense*. I love how I free and productive and unconflicted I feel about being part of the team, and I feel honored to be part of the Dreamwidth community, and pleased that I'm helping out

(Besides, it's fun *grin*)