Summary of the foundation call held on 14th June 2018

[Basawaraj_Savalagi]

Hello everyone.

Here is the summary of the foundation call held on 14th June 2018.

Certification.

• We discussed on the upcoming launch of certification.
• Content of certification course will focus on the context (like why ERPNext, the approach consultant should take, cost of maintaining customisations etc) and list links to documentation and other resouces.
• We should have developer certification in long term.
• We will have a badge for certified consultants.

Role of Foundation

• Foundation will play an enabler role and not hire developers/analysts to deliver results.
• We will do more events to facilitate interaction between community members.

Community Contribution

• We discussed about foundation hiring a developer to play “Pull Request Manager” role - This will unnecessarily introduce a layer between core developers and contributors from community.
• We should focus on improving the quality of Pull Requests sent.
• If you try to send a PR now, you will see a list of things to consider which helps ( Thanks to Ameya @codingCoffee )
• Frappe team will commit on a definite timeline by which they will merge or give feedback.
• Need a code “style guide” - I will check this.
• Online Code Sprints - Not sure how effective these will be, but lets experiment.

[lalnco]

@Basawaraj_Savalagi

This will unnecessarily introduce a layer between core developers and contributors from community.

This was a view of some members on the call. And it’s good to have diverse view to get to the solution fast. I would appreciate your consideration of others view and not term them as “unnecessary” -maybe you want to wait for some more time to act on these recommendations, and that is fine.

You are doing good work, Keep it up, but be more flexible in accepting others view as well. Thanks.

[max_morais_dmm]

@Basawaraj_Savalagi

We discussed about foundation hiring a developer to play “Pull Request Manager” role - This will unnecessarily introduce a layer between core developers and contributors from community.

I know fundation is not OCA and ERPNext is not Odoo, but maybe foundation can learn something with OCA

A word from the president

@Basawaraj_Savalagi

We should focus on improving the quality of Pull Requests sent.

Improve the quality of the pull requests send is an gradual step.

My opnion about this, is that you could not force developers to produce high quality codes, on the begining.

• Is the same than force an alpinist to climber the Himalaia, naked and without extra oxigen, him can begin, but never will end!
• Or to force an aircraft mechanic to swap one of the engines in the middle of an flight!

Both cases you can do, but same results will appear.

@lefebvre_bern FYI

[lefebvre_bern]

I do not agree that “This will unnecessarily introduce a layer between core developers and contributors from community”. I see it more as a solution that could free some time for the core developers while helping community contribution to reach the Quality standards. I think it can also help to speed up the entire process and speed in a very important factor.

The example I gave during the call represents well this situation:

• Customer is interested in ERPNext
• Gap analysis highlight something that is not supported by ERPNext and could be beneficial to the whole community
• Customer wants this in 2 weeks in order to go ahead with the project
• we submit pull request and even with all the best intentions from everybody, it takes more time than what the customer is willing to wait
• we end up putting the modification in a custom app

This situation represent one of the best contribution scenario and if we had someone to work closely with us, ensuring fast response and working with us to get the code up to standards, I think everybody wins.

Foundation, as a team, can probably afford the salary of one or more person wearing this role in contrast to me / my company alone, I don’t have the funds for this.

Don’t forget that the time we spend on dealing with this back and forth between core developers and us during a pull request is not something we can pass to the customer.

I already hear purist say “you don’t need to be paid to contribute”. True, but for a micro company like mine, this is still the best scenario.

[felix]

@lefebvre_bern

I do not agree that “This will unnecessarily introduce a layer between core developers and contributors from community”. I see it more as a solution that could free some time for the core developers while helping community contribution to reach the Quality standards. I think it can also help to speed up the entire process and speed in a very important factor.

In addition, having at least one developer-oriented individual could help the Foundation in the area of bounties. The would not code, but help make the issue spec up-to-par so that outside parties actually have enough to go off of to develop and claim the bounty. OCA group-funded contributions is an area where this has happened.