Re: Guix Survey (follow up on "How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?")

[Wilko Meyer]

Hi Simon,

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> I would add the questions as:
>
>  + the kind of contributions: patches, translation, bug report,
>  discussions on guix-devel or help-guix, else
>
>  + the number of contributions using some ranges 1, [2-9], [10-100], 100+
>
>  + channels of communication: IRC, guix-devel, help-guix, else (Reddit,
>  etc.)
>
>  + contribution to other free software (patches, translation, bug
>  report)
>
>  + editor of choice (as the survey from Haskell [1])
>
>  + and maybe some other questions from [1] :-)
>
> WDYT?

These are excellent ideas. I think there was a discussion on this
mailing list recently on communication channels (e.g. on having a web
forum iirc) so asking what channels of communications participants
currently use and what they would like to use seems like a good idea.

Asking about contributions to other free software projects and what type of
contributions people make also seems quite interesting.

I'll have a closer look at the Haskell survey later on; for now I think
it'd be a good idea to share my .org outline on prospective survey
questions. It's far from being a usable and polished questionaire and
mostly contains question ideas grouped by prospective topics loosely
based on the discussions on this mailing list.

Feedback, ideas, different questions, and edits are always appreciated
as I'm pretty sure I'm probably missing out on areas that are important
to other folks on this mailing list/for Guix as a whole.

--- guix-survey-questions.org ---

* Guix Survey Questions

** Demographic

- Which region do you live in? (providing a set of regions)
- How old are you? (providing a set of age ranges?)
- What is your gender identity? (freeform)
- Field of work
  
** Technical/Usage
*** Guix as a Package Manager

**** General Usage of Guix

- Why do you use Guix? (freeform)
- Where/on what platform do you use Guix? (Guix System, on top of other
  distributions etc.)
- How many years have you been using Guix?
- In what context do you use Guix? (academic, work, private etc.)
- What do you use Guix for? (packaging, systemconf, reproducible
  research and so on)
  ...system configuration
  ...home configuration (guix home)
  ...setting up development environments (guix shell)
  ...for container shells (guix shell --container)
  ...building and packaging software (guix build)
  ...accessing older versions of software/of guix (guix time-machine)
  ...to bundle software for non-guix targets (guix pack)
  ...possibly more use cases or freeform?
- Have you ever considered to stop using Guix, if so why? (freeform)
- Which features keep you using Guix? (should be a list with optional
  freeform)
- What other package managers do you use?
- If you couldn't use Guix, what would be your preferred alternative?
- To extend guix packages/work on new packages, you...
  ...upstream to guix proper
  ...maintain a fork of guix proper
  ...maintain your own guix channel
  ...provide a guix.scm for the respective projects

**** Guix for Software-Development

- Do you use Guix for software development?
- What languages do you work with?
- Do you use guix import/are there importers missing?
- Is there a build system for a language you use missing?
- What features of Guix are part of your developer workflow?

*** Guix System

- Do you use Guix System? (exclusion criterion for the following
  questions if not)

  ...Yes, as my main OS.
  ...Yes, but I mainly use other OS.
  ...No

- How many years have you been using Guix System?
- Have you used Guix as a foreign package manager on another
  distribution before starting to use Guix System?
- Hardware related questions (ISA, Laptop/Desktop, avail. RAM;
  shouldn't go too much into detail)
- Which other OS do you regularly use besides Guix System?
- Why did you choose to use Guix System?
- Which features of Guix Systems are important to you?

*** Guile

- How many years have you been using Guile?
- How many years have you been coding in general?
- Have you been using Guile or another Scheme implementation before
  using Guix?
- What is your level of Guile proficency?

** Contributions/Community

*** Communications

- Which communication channels do you use to talk about Guix?

  guix-devel
  help-guix
  IRC
  Matrix

- Is there any relevant communication channel missing?

*** Contributions

- What describes your involvement with Guix the best?

  ...I just use Guix as a package manager
  ...I use Guix to package software/as a part of my development routine
  ...I contribute packages/patches to Guix proper
  ...I contribute packages/patches to other Channels
  ...I have commit access to Guix proper
  ...Other/freeform

- Have you and in what form contributed to Guix?

  Yes, via patches
  Yes, via translations
  Yes, I file bug reports
  Yes, I partake in discussions on e.g. guix-devel
  Yes, other
  No.

- If not, what prevents you from contributing? (this should be a list
  with a freeform option)
- Have you contributed to Guix in the past and stopped, if so what
  were your reasons? (list of options with freeform)
- When was your first contribution to Guix?
- Can you give a rough estimate on your number of contributions?
- What resources have you used for help to prepare a contribution?

  Guix Manual
  IRC
  Mailing lists and so on...

- What text editor do you use to hack on Guix?

*** Misc.

- If there's one thing about Guix you could change/improve, what would
  it be?

- What would you see as the best, what would you see as the worst area
  of Guix?

- Anything missing in this survey? What topic would you like to see
  covered?

-- 
Kind regards,

Wilko Meyer
w@wmeyer.eu