Reading Alberto’s recent post let’s make it easier made me think of last years New York Times article A Star is Made.

The article mentions computer programming and I do think it applies well to GNOME. Some people have been practicing (contributing and coding for GNOME) more than others and many of those people were probably able to get lots of positive feedback on their early work which encouraged them to continue working more. And thus a GNOME contributor is born!

I don’t think I would have started with GNOME had there not been such a quick feedback loop for working on the project. Luckily for me, friends of mine and I had created a group at school called the Open Source Institute where we could get course credit working on lots of different Open Source projects to learn about the software creation process. Beyond our small group of GNOMErs meeting other GNOME hackers at GUADEC and the Summit was a great way to feel more connected to the people responsible for all this cool work.

Just a small suggestion to not only focus on making getting started easier but creating a good feedback loop for new people. Perhaps using communities like GNOME Love to share patches made between new contributors.