Day Four: The Decision Has Been Made

Last class, my team chose XBMC as our FOSS project. I am really excited because there are a lot of opportunities to contribute to this vibrant community in the form of bug fixes and/or updated documentation. The headline on XBMC's wiki page asks users to update the manual for the latest release (Eden, XBMC v11). I do not know exactly how much work goes into updating documentation from one release to the next, but I can imagine that it is a significant amount of work, especially if the latest build is drastically different from the previous build. I went to webchat.freenode.net and logged into XBMC's channel (#XBMC) earlier today and left my browser open to monitor the chatter. The majority of discussion that I saw was between end users. One user wanted to know if intel and nvidia's atom/ion platform could handle 1080p playback when using XBMC. Another user asked about networking issues when syncing multiple XBMC clients to a single media source. The responses were generally quick, and the discussions seemed very lively; however, I did not notice any topics relevant to software development. With an average of 300 or more users on the IRC at any given time, it is difficult to believe that this brief example of chatter reflects an average discussion. If a user asked a question related to development issues, I am sure that a qualified user would respond. I will leave my browser open tomorrow and investigate this further.

I looked over the forum, and it seems that there is much more technical discussion. There are several forum topics and sub-forums, but the big ones are "Help and Support" and "Development." As I said earlier, it is difficult to judge an IRC from a single day's worth of monitoring; however, a forum has every thread available for viewing and discussion at any given point. If my group has any questions, we should try the IRC just to see if we get a response, but the forum is a sure way to get a decent reply. It just might take a little longer. Once my group decides on a particular interest within this project, I plan on introducing myself in the IRC and gauging the response. My group is meeting on Sunday to discuss possible ideas for contribution. I will report on our decisions and see what the XBMC community has to say.