Hi Quiliro,
Quiliro Ordóñez Baca <quiliro@congresolibre.org> skribis:
> There is a university that wants to make their own distro. I suggested
> to use GUIX. They offered to pay me to help with the project. But I told
> them I am starting my time bank. I they want my collboration, I would
> ask for them to pay me in hours. I propose the same thing to you. These
> people will collaborate in your project in exchage for your help. If you
> have another proposal, please tell me.
>
> I suggested them that they do not fork. I suggested they make their own
> ISO and desktop theme and to have a local mirror of GUIX packages. That
> way GUIX helps them and they help GUIX. They will incorporate the
> following team:
>
> * 6 students that know how to program in C, C++ and Java (40 working
> weeks, 5 days per week, 2 hours per day = 2400 person/hours)
> * 1 student from graphic design (time allotment to be negotiated)
> * 1 student from management (time allotment to be negotiated)
> * 1 student from communications (not telecommunications) (time
> allotment to be negotiated)
> * the directors of those 3 departments will help coordinate
>
> Are you willing to help us?
Yes, but only in the same way that I help anyone who tries to get
involved, as this is purely volunteer work. So this is really best
effort, so to speak.
I think this is a great project. However, getting young students
started to work on such a project probably requires a fair amount of
mentoring: probably they’ll have to learn about how free software
hackers communicate, how patch submission and review work, what the
software stack looks like, etc. I don’t think I can spend this much
effort, as this would effectively prevent me from doing anything else.
If you do the heavy lifting, then that may be easier, of course.
What do you think?
> I can do the heavy-lifting. I have some gaps about the things you
> mention. If you send links to the docs I can deal with that.
>
> The big question is: do you think, based on the knowledge level I have
> told you they have (programming in C, C++ and Java), the students will
> be able to have the distro ready for use of end users in that timeframe
> (1 year)?
Short answer: probably not. As discussed before, two things to
consider:
1. Students will most likely discover how free software development
works, which means they will probably not be “productive” at least
in the first few months. The goal should be to “get them started
with free software development”, rather than to “build a distro”
(BTW, note that Guix is 1.5 year old, to give an idea of the
effort.)
2. Work on the distro happens anyway. By “end users”, I think you
mean with a fancy desktop à la GNOME. That work may happen in the
coming year anyway, but at the same time, most early contributors
are hackers with little interest in such things.
Hope this helps.
Please think through it, and follow-up on guix-devel@gnu.org when you
have clearer ideas.
Depending on what you really want to do, it might be that students would
be better off contributing to a well-established distro like Trisquel.
Thanks,
Ludo’.
Here is a conversation held on IRC #guix channel: