kelset
commented
5 years ago Follow up thingy: for the maintainer role we don't have a "trial" like there's - basically - the external contributor role.
And also, we may basically want to get some less experienced developers involved but since they need some guidance we'd prefer to have a "trial" role for that too.
So I'd propose this intermediate step as:
- invited to the Discord
- added only to the repo they are getting involved in with Read auths
Lmk what you think - I want a cool name for this role as I feel it would be the one that can make feel new oss citizens more welcomed 🤗
andrewtremblay
turnrye
sibelius
jgcmarins
Naturalclar
cpojer
luancurti
lucasbento
codler
aksonov
ajith-ab
tbenr
numandev1
Introduction
This wants to basically be a "better written version" of the answer I tend to give to people that ask me "how can I get involved in the RNComm" and variations - hoping that this can serve as a baseline to then turn the whole conversation into something we can put in the guidelines.
The core of it
Basically, active involvement in the React Native Community can be sort of defined in one of these three roles:
External contributor
This is the easiest / broadest "bucket" - anyone who submits a PR to any of the repos without having any level of permissions on it is here. The PRs could be about anything, from fixing a bug to improving the README, and usually it's a 1-PR-and-go scenario (also called "drive-by" in some other oss project).
If an external contributor instead keeps "coming back", and shows that they are interested in helping / that they are passionated about the project - which usually means submitting more good quality PRs, they can be turned in...
Internal/core contributor
This kind of contributor is different in two ways from the external one: 1) they have write auth in the repo 2) they are overall responsible for keeping the codebase in a good state, in ways like 1) submittings PRs to keep the repo up to date VS react native 2) publishing new versions 3) work on releases / update / write the changelogs 4) adding toolings for things like CI 5) reviews PRs
Maintainer
Lastly, maintainers - they differ from core contributors in a number of ways: 1) they only require read level of permissions over the repo (of even the new triage role which is still in beta) to get started 2) they are overall responsible for keeping the repo in an healthy state, which means doing things like 1) reviewing PRs 2) do issue grooming/triaing 3) introduce & configure things like ProBots 4) maintain the non-code files in a repo, ex. issue templates, CoC, README etc 5) work on releases / update / write the changelogs
A way to become a maintainer is also to just start helping out in the issue section of the repo by answering to questions, providing repros and or suggesting workarounds - or even cc'ing in the maintainer on issues that can be closed.
All of this said, usually the core contributor and maintainer are collapsed, and in most conversations even in this repo, they are completely interchangeable. I just wanted to, here, point out the difference because it may provide more roads and more opportunities for new introducing new people that are interested in only some of those things.
Also, basically, both roles are reachable via being a good OSS citizen, by showing interest and commitment 🤗
Discussion points
Please feel free to add roles, tasks and change the ones I described above - I literally mostly free flow wrote everything above so I'm sure it will not be complete or perfect 😅