Results of the 2015 Contribution Survey
Thanks to your 76 responses
How much time do you dedicate to Odoo contributions in one month?
When you contribute, you...
If you could contribute more, you would...
Improvements
What are the main barriers to prevent you from contributing?
What could the OCA do to reduce/eliminate those barriers?
"oca up" tooling
Video showing the first step.
Clone me;
(1) More documentation on how-to-contribute, and (2) more documentation on existing module
Clear objectives per project, add rules to avoid same company revierws upvoting their own merge requests
Add extra hours in the day or extra day in the week
May be hire dedicated reviewers.
what oca does is definitely enough
some odoo advenced technical training
Run simple and guided projects for new contributors after which they would graduate into fully capable contributors.
Centralize, standardise, link and update documentation and doc sources for each project and central contribution pages. A Q&A would be nice.
Significantly reduce unwanted changes on the 'Maintainer quality tools' that put the branches of PR in red...
Samples / demos / documentation
Well... to get known for a start :-) I barely know you, and what you mean to Odoo, the Community and everyone that might be involved in developing and promoting Odoo.
Limit cosmetic changes in the maintainer tools. Currently, there are too many changes (header, readme, ...)
Step by step guides
Connect the Transifex modules in a single project to be able to share the translation memory. Avoid becoming too "bureaucratised" - too obsessed with protocols and rules; the absolute quality control results in no final product.
Netter Dokumentation on how to contribute.Stop complex registration for code contribute on.
Some written material on how to contribute with efforts would be a nice, best if they are validated by teachers to ensure they are engaging to new members.
Rather than the current process of code then design by reviewers, perhaps a less insane model. But it always seems the chosen ones get questionable, even buggy work merged without question because they operate a little circle while good contributions are blocked for inane reasons.
Helping
Reduce bureaucracy for committers. Committers should be trusted enough that they can commit changes without waiting for approval from for another committer.
OCA does an IMPRESSIVE and GREAT JOB! OCA is not the barries. A lot of times it's Odoo since we can't improve the core and our technical skills are denied. I often feel taken for a fool.
automate as much as possible
More funcional tests and less technical tests. It is an effort contribute, the mostly times it obligates you to dedicate a lot of time fixing small technical and personal comments.
Provide video examples of every step, so I can see the path to take.
Create a real fork, quality oriented
Create a list of easy hacks (like in LibreOffice)
fork Odoo
Some videos or gifs with "how to" examples
When propose a module automatically format it according guideline.
Not too much, it's more about time, not to depend on somebody else.
Better tutorials (for older versions of odoo/openerp)
What could the OCA do to make your contribution time more efficient?
frequently restate where I can go (url) to help. (As Maxime often does)
Increase visibility of how to contriubute documentation. There should be a link on every OCA page and repo.
significantly reduce the frequency of change in the maintainer quality tools that put PR red too easily
what oca does is definitely enough
First funcional tests and then technical, maybe a module is not interesting because it is bad designed and you dedicate a lot of time fixing techs for nothing. It is very important i know that funcional test is bored but it is the more important review, with an interesting addon the contributor will be dedicate more effort to the final technical details because he see the merge close.
same
Significantly reduce unwanted changes on the 'Maintainer quality tools' that put the branches of PR in red...
Samples / demos / documentation
OCA should avoid to always add new rules in the MQT on a stable release. IMO, new rules in MQT must be planned, announced and released by following a 'milestone' process. I'm scared and sometimes furious to see features added to MQT applied to everything just because 3 people have approved these new features. We also must use more standard python tools to package and release our modules to takes benefit from the python ecosystem in place of to reinvent the wheel in MQT to put in place some kind of specific tools to deal with the way Odoo manages its dependencies. For a python dev the lack of standard is a barrier since we need to use undocumented tricks and tips to put in place our dev env and properly manage dependencies. This problem smoothly explode with the growing number of addons provided by OCA.
Invite others to fix your issues of travis.
Invite others to fix your issues of travis.
I don't know since I'm too unfamiliar with the OCA
Speed/ease up the PR processes and OCA project creation
More/better linting, open design processes to coordinate / agree on shared efforts (see eg docker)
Would have been nice to have a video tutorial to start. Introduce owners of projects.
[...]. Truthfully github is a piece of shit for managing OCA projects made even shittier by arbitrary project / repo definitions.
Better doc and how to
Provide a list of suggestions of new modules and features to be developed by new contributors and provide guidance
fork Odoo
I'm from Brazil and a local branch of OCA would be nice, contributions in local currency would also help, also monthly contributions would be better than the current yearly contribution, as they would be much smaller in comparison.
The problem is the lack of people to review, including ourselfes...
Probably to atract more commiters, but since LGPL more new features are paid and less free.
quicker review
Better tutorials (for older versions of odoo/openerp)
Do you agree with the following statements?
Do you have improvement suggestions to the OCA in general?
Provide a video on how to help by reviewing/testing modules.
We really need a search engine on modules (like odoo search, but specific to oca)
Not at this time
Add a bit of information / intro for every module (readme.md)
Add more content about real implementations and success stories with Odoo all over the world
Feel closed. I was lucky to know someone in the OCA. A welcome committy to help newcomers get around would be nice. People who can make introductions.
Coolness Factor! OCA is a brand, isn't it?
Keep AGPL, Split github repo per module
make contributors activity more visible so the business start supporting the OCA
First funcional tests and then technical as i comment in last question
I believe that Odoo SA has chosen the closed way, with v9 and feature regressions for the open source version. OCA has now to re-implement missing features, work on open upgrade path, upgrade all its modules and improve quality via OCB (when refused by Odoo SA). In my opinion, it's time to fork and assume it. From v8, with more quality and testing focus. We should all win with mastering upgrade plans, global quality...
Marketing for nerds asking for contributions, expend as much as possible to bring more programmers and make them closest to OCA:
OCA to thank you for this difficult balancing game that you play because despite everything we need as much as Odoo than Odoo needs us.
Orient to become a cooperative instead of just an association, to be able to bid on bigger projects and compete with corporations.
for the reviews: focus on the implementation before looking the form
Separation of decision making from Odoo sa is imperative. Also, partnership to OCA should provide an alternative to Odoo sa partnership
More starndard procedure on how-to-contribute
I'd love to have a branch of OCA in each country with a localization, as much as we can share knowledge worldwide, localization should be the main focus in the next few years.
maybe in your next survey I can give you more serious answers
Be more pro-active in guarding and promoting the interests of the community with respect to Odoo S.A.
Need to organize better the comunnity contributions and need a clear place where the contributions could be find and who is the responsible. Also a roadmap and feature backlog is needed
Probably to make events in countries with less contribuitors for advertise and to atract them.
Profiles
What is your Odoo profile?
How did you first hear about Odoo?
What is your OCA profile?
What is your employer/company profile?
Does your employer/company have an Odoo Enterprise contract?
What are your skills?
Comments:
I've been eager to contribute code to OCA but my Python skills are still average. But if I get the chance to contribute my skills would go high quickly and I could be very useful to myself and community. Please facilitate the chance.
None
Nice ;-) This get's transformation going!
Please read all answers
I have been a Web custom application programmer for years and decided recently to work fully with Odoo in open source commitment. I wan't to contribute but I'm very scared about Odoo SA direction. I hope that a durable fork will appear, before too much technical debts. If v10 follows proprietary path, more rewritten functionalities are closed and OCA has not finished work on OpenUpgrade and modules reimplementations for v9, it will be harder and harder to have a viable free, libre and open source fork...
Thank you very much for your contribution to make Odoo a better product.
OCA makes a wonderful work
