How We Run Our Project: KRITA
Open source projects are in a unique position since they are mostly community projects. Often times run by unpaid volunteers that have a passion in a certain area. As a project begins to grow, many areas start surfacing that weren't thought about. Things like paying for hosting fees, marketing their project, or trying to improve their communication with volunteers. Many projects are ran by developers that don't have a lot of education and experience in these areas. Many times they end up "winging it" or blindly copying other projects with mixed results.
The best way to learn about these other areas is to see how other open source projects operate and what problems are being solved. Not just WHAT they are doing, but WHY they are doing it. From this learning style, project maintainers and volunteers can make better decisions on adopting new technology or changing their communication strategy. Some ideas and tools might not fit with your project or community.
In this talk, you will learn about how the drawing application Krita operates. Krita is an award winning drawing and painting program that has millions of artists using it. See how this project operates and understand how its philosophy and mission statement drive its decisions. Learn from practical examples on marketing, growing your user base, and generating interest beyond the linux community. The talk will focus on everything that doesn't deal with programming.
- Website and download hosting
- Realtime communication
- Mailing lists
- Weekly meetings
- UI Design and Usability Testing
- QA Testing and Release Schedule
- Bug reporting
- Handling new feature requests
- Managing volunteers
- Documentation
- Marketing, fundraisers, GSoC
- Finances
- Current Struggles
After learning about these areas, you should have some ideas and approaches to improve your process with your own open source project. Most open source projects struggle with finding help. It is critical that projects can find ways to save time and money with their limited resources. This talk will hopefully provide you with extra tools and knowledge to grow your project and community.
