1 of 8

Google

Oct 19, 2023

External Contributions

Shruthi

BlinkOn 18

2 of 8

Chromium

External Contributions

BlinkOn 18

3 of 8

Trends

4 of 8

Why?

5 of 8

Ideas

Code review latency -> Share code areas where contributions will be enthusiastically welcomed, Train more external reviewers?
Path to code ownership -> Share list of unmaintained code directories where active commons work is happening
Lack of in-person meetups -> More BlinkOns?!! ;)
Disconnect -> Ongoing channels for support/escalations/brainstorming of this kind?

Code review latency - This seems to be a rare occurrence based on what I hear. It depends on the team, code area, traffic in the area, number of code reviewers. Code reviewers take code reviews very seriously, but every once in a while, the timing might be off. The entire team might be out at a summit or launching a new feature, right when you all are trying to land code. Some areas might not have too many reviewers, but the end result is that you all might be feeling the pinch. So couple of ideas here. There are lots of ideas around code health projects that we don’t have the time or resources to invest in all of them. We can share these ideas too!

Especially our newer contributors would love to get to the badge of honor that is code ownership and sometimes that can seem like a long path and overwhelming.

I can definitely say I feel the void from not meeting people from the community in person. Just kidding about more BlinkOns. :) How to recreate this low latency, dedicated forums where exchange of ideas can happen freely.

Maybe many of you are thinking about the same problems as I am, but we are just not connected. So, here’s an invitation to please connect with me, and if there are as many of us as I hope there are, who are interested in exploring, contributing, owning and driving some of the work in this space, I am happy to create ongoing channels/working groups/taskforces.

6 of 8

Brainstorming Sustainable Solutions

7 of 8

Start a

Chromium

Open Collective Fund?

I’ll wrap up with one of my personal favorite ideas I have been thinking about. I know the economy is different than 3 years back and our roadmaps are driving our full time engineers in so many different directions. But, like I said I do believe there are ideas and skills out there that the web platform can benefit from. So, how about contributing a few million dollars collectively to an open collective, that would then fund projects that developers care about? We can lean on shared research and objectives, and we can figure out a simple structure and governance that would work to direct funds to the right projects. If you all think this is something that could work and benefit Chromium and the web, talk to me here, after this talk, or feel free to reach out to me at any time. I’d love thinking partners, collaborators, even nay-sayers are welcome to reach out, I am happy to chat more.

Image credit: Josh Appel on Unsplash

1 of 8

2 of 8

3 of 8

4 of 8

5 of 8

6 of 8

7 of 8

8 of 8