Lightning talks with Community Contributors
I think this was a really interesting talk (because of all the contributors talking), and my only minor complaint was that it was up against some really good talks, and we didn’t get more people showing up to a talk that was very largely on the great Architecture of Participation. It also is interesting, as it goes to show that blogging can get you good rewards – most of everyone listed below, is a somewhat active blogger.
Martin Friebe – bug reports, patches
Why? Its just cool to contribute. Improves your knowledge. MySQL rewards you (named on the website, Enterprise, etc.).
How? Write code. Look for limitations. Just use MySQL.
Peter Zaitsev
Hates submitting bugs, but he needs a bug free MySQL for himself and customers. Therefore, report them, and scream loud!
Be an early adopter.
Regular hardware, for storage engine benchmarks. Patches, and other cool bits for MySQL.
Sheeri Kritzer – blogger, user group meetings, podcasts
Bugs, but contributing is not only technical. “Just do it” (in terms of user groups)
You set your own deadlines, and you look like a hero when you’re a community member, as opposed to it being your job.
Don’t overcommit: back out earlier, rather than later
“chronic volunteer”
Paul McCullagh – PBXT storage engine
While testing PBXT, he found a few bugs, and thats how he became a Quality Contributor. He didn’t get such a status by writing PBXT. I do think thats wrong, and maybe MySQL needs to drop Quality, and just have it as the Contributor program?
Baron Schwartz – innotop, blogger
MySQL is not perfect, and he misses a lot of Microsoft SQL Server’s tools. His motto is “don’t complain, do something about it.” And the opportunity is obvious.
innotop started as an InnoDB transaction monitor, sort of like mytop for InnoDB.
Next, MySQL Toolkit.
Beat Vontobel – blogger
User since 3.23, active since 5.0-alpha – lots of new features to blog about and a lot of bugs to post about. Surprised that most of his bugs got fixed very quickly. Blogging as a means of sharing knowledge.
Advises to be a customer, as bug reports are free, but if it hits the internal bug database, you’re set at it getting fixed quicker
Yoshiaki Tajika – NEC Japan, MySQL Customer Support
3 years ago, NEC began to support MySQL.
He likes the bug reporting system, as compared to the Microsoft SQL system – bug reports posted anytime, without any cost, and talking with the developers directly happen.
Mike Kruckenberg
Find things that are interesting, write about it, report it, change it.
Jeremy Cole – bug reports, patches, blogging
SHOW PROFILE in 5.0.37! DorsalSource. Builds of MySQL with patches and other interesting stuff. Go to website, upload patch, and you get builds on many different architectures.
Bill Karwin – prolific forum poster!
SHA2() patch – comment that federal government wanted sha2 support in all applications in govt. Then he felt bad, so he wrote a feature! Passes the tests, and this is how a feature got enabled.
Works at Zend Technologies, doing Zend Framework supporting MySQL. Writes articles on Forge.
Ask Bjorn Hansen
Used MySQL since around ’96-1997. Started with mSQL first! Everything thats paid for his bills for ~10 years, have relation to MySQL!
Read the *excellent* documentation (a few times)!
“File a bug a week” goal – this is way too easy. Install a new Linux distribution, read the documentation and file away!
3 underrated MySQL features: Standards!
1. Timezone support (save all your date/datetime columns in UTC)
2. Unicode support (he wants an application that he can place his name in the right way!). Tmp table memory requirements go up, but its OK…
3. Use strict mode! (STRICT_TRANS_TABLES and if brave use STRICT_ALL_TABLES)
Technorati Tags: mysql, mysqlconf, mysqlconf07, community contributors, architecture of participation
