Re: [DISCUSSION] Growing the Git community

> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:30:13PM -0400, Derrick Stolee wrote:
> > During the Virtual Git Contributors' Summit, Dscho brought up the topic of
> > "Inclusion & Diversity". We discussed ideas for how to make the community
> > more welcoming to new contributors of all kinds. Let's discuss some of
> > the ideas we talked about, and some that have been growing since.
> >
> > Feel free to pick apart all of the claims I make below. This is based
> > on my own experience and opinions. It should be a good baseline
> > for us to all arrive with valuable action items.
> >
> > I have CC'd some of the people who were part of that discussion. Sorry
> > if I accidentally left someone out.
> >
> > I. Goals and Perceived Problems
> >
> > As a community, our number one goal is for Git to continue to be the best
> > distributed version control system. At minimum, it should continue to be
> > the most widely-used DVCS. Towards that goal, we need to make sure Git is
> > the best solution for every kind of developer in every industry. The
> > community cannot do this without including developers of all kinds. This
> > means having a diverse community, for all senses of the word: Diverse in
> > physical location, gender, professional status, age, and others.
> >
> > In addition, the community must continue to grow, but members leave the
> > community on a regular basis for multiple reasons. New contributors must
> > join and mature within the community or the community will dwindle. Without
> > dedicating effort and attention to this, natural forces may result in the
> > community being represented only by contributors working at large tech
> > companies focused on the engineering systems of very large groups.
> >
> > It is worth noting that this community growth must never be at the cost
> > of code quality. We must continue to hold all contributors to a high
> > standard so Git stays a stable product.
> >
> > Here are some problems that may exist within the Git community and may
> > form a barrier to new contributors entering:
> >
> > 1. Discovering how to contribute to Git is non-obvious.
> >
> > 2. Submitting to a mailing list is a new experience for most developers.
> >    This includes the full review and discussion process.
> >
> > 3. The high standards for patch quality are intimidating to new contributors.
> >
> > 4. Some people do not feel comfortable engaging in a community without
> >    a clear Code of Conduct. This discomfort is significant and based on real
> >    experiences throughout society.
> >
> > 5. Since Git development happens in a different place than where users
> >     acquire the end product, some are not aware that they can contribute.
>
> 6. Newcomers don't really have any idea /what/ they could contribute.
> They either have to come with their own itch to scratch, or read the
> code to figure out if there's something to fix.