Contributionin the Drupal community

Kálmán Hosszu, Senior Drupal Engineer at PronovixDiána Lakatos, Technical Writer at Pronovix

Thursday, May 9, 13

What is contribution?

By definition:

• the part played by a person in bringing about a result

• act of giving in common with others for a common purpose

In the Drupal community:

• contributors are the sole force behind improvements to the platform

Thursday, May 9, 13

Session structure

What drives us? What is the psychological background of open source communities?

How can you contribute to Drupal?

Practise and exercise

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The psychology of contribution

The drive for contribution- What motivates us?(Drive by Daniel H. Pink)

• reward good behavior• punish bad behavior

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Study

reward top performers, ignore low performers, others are in the middle

Results of the study:• for mechanical tasks: the higher the pay, the

better the performance• once the task called for even rudimentary

cognitive skill: higher reward leads to poorer performance!

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How could that be? Let's test again!

maybe the reward ($50) wasn't significant, let's test it somewhere else: Madurai, Rural India

Replicated experiment:

• low performance: 2 weeks' salary• middle performance: 1 month's salary• high performance: 2 months' salary

Result: low and middle reward lead to similar performance, high reward lead to worse performance

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What have we learned?For simple, straightforward tasks, the motivation scheme is valid:

IF you do this

THEN you get that

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What have we learned?

When a task gets more complicated, it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, then

...these kinds of motivators don't work!

Thursday, May 9, 13

Motivating factors & personal satisfaction

• autonomy (leads to engagement) • mastery (satisfying)• purpose (ikigai - a reason to get up in the morning)

Example: Linux - from volunteers given away for free

Why do people who otherwise do sophisticated, challenging work in their jobs, volunteer to work for free?

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Contribute to Drupal

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Mission

• develop a leading edge open-source content management system that implements the latest thinking and best practices in community publishing, knowledge management, and software design.

Key values:• flexibility, simplicity, and utility in our product• teamwork, innovation, and openness in our community• modularity, extensibility and maintainability in our code

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Principles

• Modular and extensible

• Quality coding

• Standards-based

• Low resource demands

• Open source

• Ease of use

• Collaboration

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How can you contribute?

• User support

• Documentation

• Translations

• Design and usability

• Donations

• Development

• Themes

• Marketing

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Community events

Code sprints

Drupal User Groups

DrupalCamps

Drupalcons

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Mentors and apprentices

What makes a good mentor?What makes a good apprentice?

What your Drupal.org profile says about you:• core developments• contributed patches, modules, themes, ...• projects• memberships• ...

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Practise

Thursday, May 9, 13

Get a Drupal.org account

• post questions in the Drupal.org Forum• report a bug in a module or theme's issue

queue• request new features in a module or theme.• report documentation errors• filter modules, themes and translations by

Drupal version

EXERCISE 1: get a Drupal.org account

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Get a Github account

• Git is the version control system Drupal.org developers use to share code with one another.

EXERCISE 2: get a Github account

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Use the Drupal.org issue tracker

• verifying bugs are still bugs• marking duplicate issues• answering support requests• responding to issues in a number of

constructive ways• creating and rolling patches

EXERCISE 3: examine the Drupal.org issue trackerThursday, May 9, 13

Issue statuses

• Active• Needs Work ["CNW"]• Needs Review ["CNR"]• Reviewed & Tested by the Community ["RTBC"]• Patch (to be ported)• Fixed• Postponed• Postponed (maintainer needs more info)• Closed (duplicate)• Closed (won't fix)• Closed (works as designed)• Closed (cannot reproduce)• Closed (fixed)

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Thank you for your attention!

Questions?

Thursday, May 9, 13