[Coin-discuss] encouraging contributions to COIN

[Brady Hunsaker]

It's great that there's more development going on in COIN than I was
aware of.  A lot more!

I guess the usual model has been that a contributor offers some code,
and one or more core developers work closely with them behind the
scenes to do the crucial work of adapting and improving the code for
integration into the distribution.

I apologize to anyone who felt that my last email was a critique along
the lines of "you aren't working fast enough".  That was not my
intention.  It's clear to me that there has and is lots of work being
done that isn't generally visible.  I believe that we can attract more
users and volunteers, however, if we make some of this activity more
visible.  Then no one will have to wonder why it sometimes takes a
while for changes to appear.

Here are my thoughts along those lines:

- I am very much in favor of Lou's suggestion of having some sort of
  "development" repository.  Code could be placed there as soon as any
  ownership issues are resolved and the contributor is willing.  This
  in itself would do a lot to make the process more visible and has
  the potential to attract other people to help with
  platform-compatibility issues or whatever problems are being faced.

- Thanks, Robin, for such a quick reply to my questions.  I'd like to
  incorporate some of these answers into the web page.  My first
  choice would be to add another page titled something like "How You
  Can Help".  This could cover using COIN (where to send questions,
  bugs, or suggestions) as well as contributing to COIN.
  Alternatively we could just add some questions to the FAQ.  I'll put
  together a draft and post it to this list next week.

- I do think it would be worthwhile posting some information about
  what projects are "in the works" or have been suggested (as long as
  contributors are comfortable with it).  This could just be a
  sentence or two description of the effort as well as the current
  status and possibly a contact person if someone wants more
  information.  I imagine just keeping this list on the website and
  updating it every two-four weeks.  I'm willing to take
  responsibility for getting this together (unless someone else wants
  to!), but I'd like to hear what other people think would be best.

Brady

----------------
Brady Hunsaker
Georgia Institute of Technology
Program in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization
School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

E-mail address:   hunsaker at isye.gatech.edu