[OSM-dev] New database server

[Paweł Paprota]

Andy,

>
>> And what I can tell you is that people in OSM (I mean admins here)
>>  are very supportive and open to changes.
>
> I'm glad to hear that! Many people say they have a different
> experience, but we try to be helpful.
>

Well, I don't know about other people, but I got everything I needed
(and much more than I imagined!) in terms of hardware, day-to-day
support etc.

In fact, I am a bit ashamed that given all the admin support I still
have not managed to finish what I set out to accomplish! :/

So yeah, I can say that again - for people who want to do stuff, sky is
the limit in OSM ;-)

>> Sadly, I simply don't have enough time to finish it to the extent
>> that it is acceptable (to me, not to mention others/admins) to
>> consider it for production use.
>
> I think many of our software projects have similar issues, and one
> of the key aspects is to try to get more than one volunteer to
> develop each one.
>
> I'm currently working on improving the documentation for the rails
> port (with a view to making it easier for new developers to get
> started).

That's a great initiative. Honestly, I have no idea where to best invest
time to raise the probability of attracting new contributors.

At the time when I was briefly attending EWG weekly sessions I really
thought about this a lot. What makes people decide they want to spend
their free time on a project? I reached some crazy conclusions that it
may even be that documentation is not a blocking issue - if someone
really wants to contribute, they will find their way. Where to get more
people like that? No idea.

Perhaps the project itself needs to be more "sexy"? I know that for some
developers (myself included) end users are one of the most important
aspects - i.e. they would rather develop for a project that is actually
used in the wild (of course I'm not saying that OSM isn't used but
certainly there are some things to be improved?).

> When I finish with that, do you think that your OWL project could
> benefit from something similar? Or are there other things that you
> think are holding back other developers from getting started?
>

Ehh... OWL is a tricky topic. In the past few months there were a couple
of people who seemed interested in contributing but I think they got
stuck at the setup stage and/or understanding the code.

I really need to try and simplify some of the implementation, document
it better etc. Perhaps I should consider narrowing the scope for OWL,
right now I think I may be trying to tackle too many issues at once -
and that's why the amount of code and its complexity is growing and also
why I am not able to deliver anything.

Currently I am thinking about making OWL a bit leaner and perhaps
separating some of the stuff (like vector tiles and integration with
client-side rendering) to other (future) projects.

I think in OSM we will (slowly but surely!) get to the tipping point and
more contributors will come.

Paweł