The opening up of the core

By: François

Unless you live under a rock, you should know that the core-team mailing list has been opened to contributions from anyone. How does that feel a month or so later?

About 6 weeks ago, Ingmar Schlecht announced that anyone could submit and review patches in the core-team mailing list as long as they followed the rules. This was a definite change of policy and a bigger event than it may have seemed to some. So how does it look like a month and a half down the line?

Not being a member of the core-team I can't speak for them, but as a "regular" developer I must say that I am positively thrilled. The experiment is much more satisfying than the short-lived bugs mailing list which was announced at T3DD07. I have been able to submit several patches, a few of which are already committed to the trunk (i.e. the future 4.2). Note that the code was not necessarily mine. Some submissions I made were for bugs across which I had stumbled in the past and for which a patch existed. But it was necessary to test the code, submit it and – most importantly – follow up in the mailing list, so that the issue didn't die out. Sometimes this feels a bit like lobbying. But it works!

Contributions are not expected to be just patches. The hope is that regular developers will also help review submitted patches and vote for (or against) them. Obviously reviewing is a more difficult task as it requires more in-depth knowledge of the TYPO3 innards. More often than not I don't feel quite up to par, but I try to give it a shot.

All this is really exciting although it has cost me a few hours of sleep. I am really happy at having been able to contribute to the TYPO3 core and also to have squashed some bugs that were high on my agenda.

And you, what do you feel about this? Are you actively contributing to TYPO3? Submitting patches? Releasing extensions? Raising awareness? How much time do you dedicate to that? Is it during your working hours or during your free time?

Come to think of it a short survey might be quite interesting...