[Development] Qt-Project misrepresented on qt.io

[Kojo Tero]

Hi,

Point taken. The open source side does need to be more clearly visible.

Currently the developer page is structured more toward the new user, with the idea that more experienced users will visit again and find more content, like the contribution guidelines.

So the improvement idea can be split in two parts:
- Provide a clearer path for potential contributors to get involved in Qt
- Make it more clear that Qt is available as open source

In practice the wiki does have a pretty good set of "how to contribute" pages, but a new user will not stumble upon them by accident. Making links to those from the developers page would probably help a lot. Also having the contribution guide in the wiki is beneficial from my point, as then anyone contributing can improve the guide.

The other side of the coin is crowding the developer page with information. A page about contributing might be a solution, or then a rethink of the developer page. The new brand style actually provides better tools for cleaner information presentation. I'll talk with a web developer about how to present the information and start trying things.

The other point on making the open source side more visible needs more thinking. It probably can be achieved partially on the developer page, but it needs wordings in many places.

Tero

-----Original Message-----
From: Development [mailto:development-bounces+tero.kojo=theqtcompany.com at qt-project.org] On Behalf Of Sean Harmer
Sent: tiistaina 19. huhtikuuta 2016 15.42
To: development at qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] Qt-Project misrepresented on qt.io

Hi,

On Tuesday 19 April 2016 12:50:20 Olivier Goffart wrote:
> I feel that with the unification, there is less and less visibility of 
> the Qt open source project:
> The qt.io home page contains no information that Qt is open source and 
> contains contributions from the community; The "Developers" section, 
> to which http://qt-project.org redirects, mostly contains information 
> for developers using Qt, (and more than half seems to be marketing 
> targeted for people not yet using Qt) and only a very small paragraph 
> near the end seems somehow targeted to contributors; Any links or 
> aggregation to planetqt seems gone. Planet Qt is supposed to be an 
> aggregation of the blogs of Qt contributors.
> 
> It was much better in 2015 where the developers page contained 
> information for contributors 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20150723065217/http://www.qt.io/developers/
> 
> I think there should be a "Contributors" section from qt.io  where qt- 
> project.org would redirect. And which would have links useful for 
> contributors, including links and aggregation of planet qt.
> 
> I acknowledge that The Qt Company is by far the biggest contributor to Qt.
> And that because of the CLA, they have no obligation whatsoever.
> But I just feel it's not fair to hide the open source nature of Qt and 
> the open source contribution completely from qt.io. When the 
> unification was announced, it was said that the open source qt-project 
> would continue to be represented, but i just feel it's no longer the case with the new website.

I agree. It's important to make it clear that Qt can still be used under FOSS licenses for free, and that Qt contains a large proportion of code contributed by individuals and companies outside of The Qt Company:

http://www.macieira.org/~thiago/qt-stats/current/qt-all.employer.relative.png

By not making it easy for people to see that it is possible for them to contribute Qt and making it easy for them to get on board with the process we are harming the project. Having a guide to making your first contribution would be great, and perhaps having a support person available to help mentor new contributors would be nice.

Kind regards,

Sean
--
Dr Sean Harmer | sean.harmer at kdab.com | Managing Director UK KDAB (UK) Ltd, a KDAB Group company Tel. +44 (0)1625 809908; Sweden (HQ) +46-563-540090
Mobile: +44 (0)7545 140604
KDAB - Qt Experts
_______________________________________________
Development mailing list
Development at qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development