Improve contribution experience #181
Description
Summary
The TSC is discussing a proposal to fund @jdm time to improve contribution experience on the Servo project.
The proposal involves recurring monthly funding for maintainer activities that are focused on:
reducing friction in the contribution process,
removing barriers to contribution,
improving the first-time contribution experience.
The ultimate goal of this work is growing Servo’s community of contributors, and protecting our pool of maintainers from stagnation.
In concrete terms, this funded time would be used to:
Investigate and file issues that can be solved by other contributors (both new and experienced)
Perform code review for open PRs, and ensure there are no PRs being overlooked
Unblock other contributors—answering questions, proposing technical solutions, etc.
Write documentation, prioritizing areas of the project with a low bus factor or frequent confusion
Work with contributors to prepare for Maintainer and Contributor nominations
These are activities that @jdm already spend time on. The goal of funding this work is not to increase the output, but to make it more consistent and reliable.
The proposal would be for a maximum of 32 hours per month, at 150 USD per hour, a maximum of 4,800 USD per month.
Type
Reimbursement for time/resources
Cost
Up to 4,800 USD per month
Periodicity
Recurring monthly payment
Benefits
This will help to grow the Servo's community of contributors and protect our pool of maintainers.
This will also show a good use of the money in the Open Collective that can incentive more donations.
Risks
If we don't do this, there are risks for the project not to be ready for new contributors; lacking expert time to dig in some issues and split them in smaller chunks for newcomers. Also risks related to maintainers feeling too much work to keep up with reviews.
Alternatives
No response
Administrator
No response
Experience
@jdm has been working on Servo since the beginning of the project, he's no longer at Mozilla but has still been one of the most active developers in the project since the transfer to Linux Foundation in 2020.
He has the experience and motivation to do this work, and would be a great benefit for the Servo project.
Other comments
No response