[dominik_christ]

Hi all, a few quick comments:

In my opinion, two useful principles to evaluate everything would be:

1) Make it as easy as possible for someone who thinks "I want to help and contribute" to do something useful.

2) Make it as little effort as possible for "heavy contributors".

If I look at some of the points raised so far in the light of these two principles, I see:

a) Currently it is necessary to ask an admin to get write access to the repo. In github/bitbucket, this is not necessary, as anyone can branch of directly (please correct me, if I'm wrong about this).

b) If the project head needs to do all the merges himself, he will not have any time to do any further development, which would not be beneficial to the progress of the project. So putting this task onto multiple shoulders appears better to me.

c) Changes to the present infrastructure should have a benefit regarding the two principles above. Just changing platform for its own sake (or for having "all by one provider") just creates additional work for admins and other heavy contributors.

An (incomplete) list of infrastructure we currently have:

* Code hosting: git on SourceForge / extend-bazaar on openfoamwiki.org
* Bug tracker: Mantis on SourceForge
* Forum: cfd-online
* Wiki: openfoamwiki.org
* Social platform: extend-project.de

Some of this can be, and needs to be, expanded (e.g. landing page on
SourceForge; commit announce sub-forum on cfd-online).

I would find it very useful if you could help with arguments how any changes to this infrastructure would be beneficial in terms of the 2 principles above.


Regarding the critical mass of contributors, this is a kind of hen and egg problem: In a free and open development, nobody can summon a critical mass out of nothing. All that we can do is to make contributing as clear (guidelines), easy (infrastructure) and accessible (public discussion) as possible.

Best regards,
Dominik