Crowdsourcing the FFF reference implementation

Friendly Forge Format (F3)
#1

Note: This is copy pasted from this discussion because it deserves an independent topic

Given FFF to evolve into a standardized format on the basis of crowdsourcing, a process that allows that must be defined. Creating the process, and organizing to set it in motion should imho be part of the application and time reserved for it.

Maybe you say: “I don’t intend to be involved with that, and anyone can pick up initiative, write a grant application, and organize themself”. Well, that in itself would be a process to clearly highlight in this application. As evaluator of the application I would frown a bit reading that, and matching it to other statements made in the text. So it should be very clear how that intended to work.

#2

While I’m convinced crowdsourcing is essential and must be a primary goal of the FFF implementors, I don’t think this should be a task in the workplan for the year to come. It will however likely be the primary focus as soon as FFF is released and used in production. The FFF implementors must then give priority to everything that allows for crowdsourcing instead of trying to implement features and details that will inevitably overwhelm them very quickly.

There are two aspects of crowdsourcing:

  • Organizational / technical enablers, i.e. setting up the organization of FFF to onboard contributors, implementing a codebase and continuous test integrations to allow them to focus on the task
  • Communication, i.e. reaching out to communities, explaining and making presentations to encourage participation

I’m very happy to work on the first one, because I’m a technical person. I can work on the second one for a while, to get things started. But this is taxing to me and I will actively look for other people who are more inclined to that kind of activity.

Does that sound sensible?