What are the criteria for contributing to development and testing?

[Anil Gulati]

> On Thursday, 18. Feb 2016, 02:07:16 +1100, Anil Gulati wrote:
> > [...] buying
> > an Intel NUC or System 76 with 5th Gen Broadwell Intel i3/i/5/i7 would be a
> > no go for X11 on FreeBSD.
> >
> > Is it possible for me to contribute to the development and testing of
> > driver support to get these chips working with the Intel HD Graphics 6000
> > 6100 etc?
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > What are the criteria for contributing to development and testing?

On 18 February 2016 at 10:03, Bertram Scharpf <lists at bertram-scharpf.de> wrote:
> Patience, patience, and again patience. Two and a half
> months ago I made the same offer to contribute because I own
> a Broadwell and because I'm an experienced programmer. The
> only thing I asked for was some instructions where to start
> from as I'm new to the FreeBSD kernel.

Thanks for the perspective, Bertram.
This is the second time I'm considering entering the fray.
The previous time I wanted to help a Python project move to Python 3K
and worked on code off and on for 3 years but couldn't get any direct
communication and ended up collaborating with someone else who was
pretty much in the same boat but the maintainer never accepted any
pull requests and I began to suspect some duplication of work.

This time I therefore don't want to start unless I'm sure I've got an
entry point that the project team actually wants to delegate.

I know that these teams are probably busy and I expect there is a
burden of induction to get new guys up and running with the particular
systems and conventions, so presumably this is why it's hard to get
accepted. I'm not sure where the "critical mass" happens in terms of
the time they put in to get us started and how much we return back.
That's why I asked for criteria. For instance, I'd like to ask the
number of hours of programming that the team would want back in return
for introducing me to the repo rules and outlining a task, so I know
what commitment I'm making.

I would hope that as long as we can agree a threshold there should be
a win/win down the track. There are instructions around on the web
pages but I don't want to get started and then find that any code
submissions I make are just ignored and my time wasted. Equally, I
don't want to be a burden to the team, I want to help, and I'm willing
to tackle the worst and the hardest jobs, once I'm clear on the
commitments and can confirm I'm good for that particular set of
expectations of so many hours over so much calendar time.