2021-06-27, 09:36
OK, up front, Kore is frigging awesome and one of the reasons along with Chorus2 that I suspect many of us are ardent Kodi fans and using it. Love it. The best FOSS media systems I can find by a mile with it's awesome community and tools.
That said, I have a number of issues with Kore that I'd love to see resolved. And when I surf to:
https://github.com/xbmc/Kore
I see 138 open issues (dating from 2015 to now), 5 open Pull Requests dating to April this year (it's now July). I see a little action but I also see loads of issues with no feedback form anyone, no triage, not comment. It all has the hallmark of no caretaking,no-one looking after it. That is not a crisis, it's FOSS, and easily expected, and nothing per se to complain about. Still, it leaves one wondering how the whole Kodi community hangs together and how it's organised and organisable. Put anotehr way, how nice would it be to have someone or a team openly caretaking a tool like Kode, and helping it move forward.
Sure I know the standard FOSS reply: step up and do it. Nice try, and fret now it's on my mind, but, and this is why I offer not complaint about any of this, I am so snowed under with existing commitments it's just not an immediate option. But many of us make that a call on questions like this and it takes into account passion, time, skills and tooling. I may run high-ish on passion, lowish on time but skills and tooling in the Android apace are poor. So I'd look more closely at this if and when I end up tackling Android development for other reasons, and tool up and skill up in that space (which I intend to).
Said another way, the best caretakers are people tooled up, with skills and some passion and a little time, not least as there is a lot of low fruit in the Kore issue space but low only if tooled up and conversant with the comparable code (Android). So for someone high on passion with a little time the question becomes how to identify and enroll others in the space and the salent question there before doing anything is, how is it all strung together if at all now?
For example we can see that of late:
https://github.com/xbmc/Kore/graphs/contributors
only Synced Synapse is even modestly active.
My gut feel is it would be nice if there's a standard way on the github project for example to post a Wanted add: Wanted: caretaker. Someone who will actively engage the community and provide feedback on issues and PRs etc. There are 93 contributors it seems, most inactive, and so perhaps this is about inspiring a more recently active contributor (by whish I read someone who has won push rights the repo and can approve pull requests etc.) to consider recruiting into such a role, advertising there and perhaps there's a way to advertise in these forums?
Part of me things this sort of thing benefits from clear systems as I imagine such roles being fairly high turnover. And maybe it's a pipe dream without funding for it, which raises a general question if any of those contributors are funded,how to fund out, etc. It's not expected, and yet not unusual to fund FOSS has employed contributors today funded in various ways, but then nor is it expected.
Anyhow, I'm invested in Kodi, using it, so would like to see how some of it's UI (in this instance Kore) can receive some polish over time, and it looks a little stagnant (for want of a better word).
That said, I have a number of issues with Kore that I'd love to see resolved. And when I surf to:
https://github.com/xbmc/Kore
I see 138 open issues (dating from 2015 to now), 5 open Pull Requests dating to April this year (it's now July). I see a little action but I also see loads of issues with no feedback form anyone, no triage, not comment. It all has the hallmark of no caretaking,no-one looking after it. That is not a crisis, it's FOSS, and easily expected, and nothing per se to complain about. Still, it leaves one wondering how the whole Kodi community hangs together and how it's organised and organisable. Put anotehr way, how nice would it be to have someone or a team openly caretaking a tool like Kode, and helping it move forward.
Sure I know the standard FOSS reply: step up and do it. Nice try, and fret now it's on my mind, but, and this is why I offer not complaint about any of this, I am so snowed under with existing commitments it's just not an immediate option. But many of us make that a call on questions like this and it takes into account passion, time, skills and tooling. I may run high-ish on passion, lowish on time but skills and tooling in the Android apace are poor. So I'd look more closely at this if and when I end up tackling Android development for other reasons, and tool up and skill up in that space (which I intend to).
Said another way, the best caretakers are people tooled up, with skills and some passion and a little time, not least as there is a lot of low fruit in the Kore issue space but low only if tooled up and conversant with the comparable code (Android). So for someone high on passion with a little time the question becomes how to identify and enroll others in the space and the salent question there before doing anything is, how is it all strung together if at all now?
For example we can see that of late:
https://github.com/xbmc/Kore/graphs/contributors
only Synced Synapse is even modestly active.
My gut feel is it would be nice if there's a standard way on the github project for example to post a Wanted add: Wanted: caretaker. Someone who will actively engage the community and provide feedback on issues and PRs etc. There are 93 contributors it seems, most inactive, and so perhaps this is about inspiring a more recently active contributor (by whish I read someone who has won push rights the repo and can approve pull requests etc.) to consider recruiting into such a role, advertising there and perhaps there's a way to advertise in these forums?
Part of me things this sort of thing benefits from clear systems as I imagine such roles being fairly high turnover. And maybe it's a pipe dream without funding for it, which raises a general question if any of those contributors are funded,how to fund out, etc. It's not expected, and yet not unusual to fund FOSS has employed contributors today funded in various ways, but then nor is it expected.
Anyhow, I'm invested in Kodi, using it, so would like to see how some of it's UI (in this instance Kore) can receive some polish over time, and it looks a little stagnant (for want of a better word).
