As historic "core devs" move on, where do we go from here?

[darius (Darius Jazayeri)]

@tendomart

@darius thanks alot for the info , am willing to offer some time to work on that(working on upgrading dataentrystatistics module) ,as well so can you curate that, so that we may get going?

@tendomart Great to hear this, and we’re happy to have your contribution! Tendo, you already know that we’re discussing this on the other thread here (at message 28-29): Proposing a sprint to help people upgrade to Platform 2.x (Mozambique tried to upgrade to Platform 2.x, but was blocked for various reasons) - #29 by darius

@tendomart

@darius do you mean an implementation like UgandaEMR ?

For example, yes. I mean someone who has one or more installations of OpenMRS, that are running older versions of the platform, and want to upgrade.

@samuel34

But just to get me in the loop, do you mind clarifying what “core OpenMRS priorities” Are?

@samuel34 it’s a good question. The quick answer is easy: “core OpenMRS priorities” means things that are important to the OpenMRS community as a whole, and not just to one particular implementation or developer.

As to how exactly we define those, that’s harder! Right now, two things happen:

1. sometimes community-focused devs like @dkayiwa, @wyclif, or I will mark a particular JIRA ticket as “community-priority”. (See the open ones here.)
2. on the Monday project management calls we sometimes notice that something is intrinsically important, or it’s a blocker so that other things can move forwards. (That’s where this recent example of “multiple groups have been unable to upgrade to platform 2.x, and this is a general problem for OpenMRS since it means that many orgs can’t take advantage of new development like Sync 2.0; therefore it’s a priority to help people get upgraded”.)

There are no objective criteria in either case, it’s really just a judgment call made by some people. But anyone is technically allowed to use the “community-priority” label on JIRA, or to join the Monday PM calls, or to just post here saying “I think X is important and we should organize efforts around it.”

@janflowers

Is there maybe confusion about the word “core” in this? Are you referring to those devs who work on the platform as a core component, or do core devs work on other things as well? Is this different then those that work on RefApp or modules?

True, it’s a bit inconvenient that we’ve used the phrase “core dev”, and also we have a piece of code called “openmrs core”, and core means different things in both cases.

As Wyclif replied, if you’re doing work that carries the OpenMRS platform forward because it’s useful/important to many groups, and not just your employer, or yourself, then you’re acting as a “core dev.”

(E.g. if you add a REST API to an existing module because your implementation needs it, that’s not really acting as a core dev; but if you do the exact same thing because “the community” said it’s important to be adding REST APIs to commonly-used modules, then you are acting as one.)

We should probably stop using the phrase “core dev” entirely. Can anyone suggest a clearer alternative?