How to Participate in OSCELOT Development
What's keeping you from becoming part of the development efforts behind OSCELOT? It is so easy to sign up for an account and join projects of interest - everyone can help out.
Each project behind OSCELOT is built and maintained by a team of collaborating develpers. Additionally projects often require, or may benefit from, assistance from UI designers, Instructional Technologists, Documentation writers, and Project Managers.
As this site becomes more feature rich we hope to provide a means for Project Leads to advertise their needs. For now your option is to troll the to projects looking projects of interest or those with bugs or features to which you feel you can contribute resolution.
Communication
Much of the developer discussion takes place on the bb-opensrc mailing list. Additionally, each project has a supporting set of mailing lists, discussion forums, and wiki. The mode of communication between project team members is determined at the discretion of the project lead adn team members.
Opening a Project
Anyone may open a project on the project site once they have created their member account. The only requirement is that you lead the project until such a time you can pass it off to another Project Lead. Have an idea, but no resources - create the project and advertise for a team - contact the bb-opensrc mailing list or info@oscelot.org
What are the roles available to you?
There are various roles available to those who wish to contribute to the projects behind OSCELOT.
While developers represent an important part of the creation and maintenance of the projects behind OSCELOT. They are but a part of a successful release team. Developers have a direct influence on a project and whether it meets the needs of end users. They are responsible for ensuring that a project works, and works as well as it can with the resources available. All roles in OSCELOT are based on the following:
Members
First and foremost all developers are members of the OSCELOT community. There are no entry requirements other than the desire to better education through technology. Members may be Developers, Committers, Project Managers, or Users who make substantive contributions in other areas such as Documentation, artwork, or organizational skills. Members care for OCELOT itself. This is usually demonstrated through the roots of project-related and cross-project activities. They also have the right to propose a new project for incubation. Community Members coordinate their activities through their mailing list(s) and through an annual meeting.
Extending Members there are four types of OSCELOT project collaborators:
Project Leaders
A Project Leader is a Developer or a Committer that either created or adopted a project, or was elected due to merit for the evolution of a project and demonstration of commitment. They have write access to the project's code repository. The Project Leader as a whole, typically, is the entity that controls the project, nobody else.
Committers
A Committer is a Developer that was given write access to the code repository and has a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file. They have an apache.org mail address. Not needing to depend on other people for the patches, they are actually making short-term decisions for the project. The PMC can (even tacitly) agree and approve it into permanency, or they can reject it. Remember that the PMC makes the decisions, not the individual people.
Developers
A Developer is a user who contributes to a project in the form of code or documentation, or design (UI/IT). They take extra steps to participate in a project, are active on the developer mailing list, participate in discussions, provide patches, documentation, suggestions, and criticism. Developers are also known as contributors. They are given membership on a project upon successful request to the Project Leader/Admin.
Contributors
A contributor is any member who contributes to a project in any form w/o becomming a project team member. This opens opportunities for contribution to the community at large w/o imposing the requirements of being on a project team.
For more detailed information on membership roles within the OSCELOT community take a look at our draft by-laws (coming soon!)
Mentorships
Mentors are Members who provide targeted support and guidance on projects at the request of the Project Lead. They typically volunteer their time to more than a single project.
Mentorship provides a simple way for open source project members to guide new participants towards work that will be a useful contribution. It allows existing members of the community to indicate which bugs or new features they are willing to provide some mentorship for and then creates lists of these items organized by project and by team. Suggestiosn for how to best implement this activity or to volunteer in a Mentor capacity please contact info@oscelot.org