I’ve said this previously, and I’ll say it again: we’re severely under-resourced. Not just XFS, the whole fsdevel community. As a developer and later a maintainer, I’ve learnt the hard way that there is a very large amount of non-coding work is necessary to build a good filesystem. There’s enough not-really-coding work for several people. Instead, we lean hard on maintainers to do all that work. That might’ve worked acceptably for the first 20 years, but it doesn’t now.

[…]

Dave and I are both burned out. I’m not sure Dave ever got past the 2017 burnout that lead to his resignation. Remarkably, he’s still around. Is this (extended burnout) where I want to be in 2024? 2030? Hell no.

  • yasha@beehaw.org
    43·
    1 year ago

    How does someone like me, a PhD candidate who has a background in Human-Computer Interaction, contribute? Or the accessibility researchers I collaborate with who sit one office down and use and love Linux and make their own hacks for Linux to improve its accessibility?

    I think part of the problem is a matchmaking (as as you said a PR) problem. I’m sure a lot of the experts you describe would love to contribute some cycles (including myself) but your post is the first time I’m hearing that people like me are needed in my HCI capacity. Otherwise I would have assumed there are plenty of programmers better than me available so why bother?

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
      21·
      1 year ago

      How does someone like me, a PhD candidate who has a background in Human-Computer Interaction, contribute?

      Start a blog where you get users to try and complete a task on a stock Linux install, and write about it.

      “Given a stock Debian XFCE install, users were tasked to connect their Airpods pro. Here’s what happened”

      (Even doing this for Lemmy, I.e. “find a community about birds”, would be insanely helpful)

      A blog like this would help give focus for developers on what needs to be improved, in every part of the stack!

      • MidwayTheMagnificent@wayfarershaven.eu
        4·
        1 year ago

        I like that. It seems the internet with theoretically good answers for things that can be difficult to find. Blog format is much easier to skim that SO, and as long as the post titles are valid and meaningful, it’s a quick check for usefulness before reading.

    • heeplr@feddit.de
      14·
      1 year ago

      use open source software. whenever you see potential to improve, open an issue with detailed explaination.

      try to solve the problem yourself. send pull requests. adapt them according to instructions by devs. when they’re good, the will get merged.

      if you use the software a lot, contribute whenever you think something is needed.

    • gamer@lemm.ee
      8·
      1 year ago

      I think ui/ux has the opposite problem where there are not enough programmers. Idk if there is a shortage of ux people, but I do know that it takes a significant amount of work to implement and maintain ui projects.

      If you are interested in helping out though, you should join the discussion forums for a project like KDE or Gnome. I doubt the Gnome people will give you the time of day, but there are many KDE projects that would appreciate volunteer work from someone like you. Browse the discussions at htltps://discuss.kde.org and see if you can find a project to latch on to, or find a project you think you can improve, and proactively reach out to the maintainer(s) with a proposal.

      Just be mindful that it may take a while before your changes are implemented, since everyone is a volunteer with other jobs and responsibilities.