blog: notes from the road

Author: tjfontaine

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -87,9 +87,3 @@ Pull requests are usually reviewed within a few days.  If there are comments
 to address, apply your changes in a separate commit and push that to your
 feature branch.  Post a comment in the pull request afterwards; GitHub does
 not send out notifications when you add commits.
-
-
-### CONTRIBUTOR LICENSE AGREEMENT
-
-Please visit http://nodejs.org/cla.html and sign the Contributor License
-Agreement.  You only need to do that once.

Makefile

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-	out/doc/cla.html      \
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doc/blog/Uncategorized/notes-from-the-road.md

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+title: Notes from the Road
+author: tjfontaine
+date: Wed Jun 11 2014 09:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT)
+status: publish
+category: Uncategorized
+slug: notes-from-the-road
+
+## Notes from the Road
+
+As Project Lead for Node.js, I was excited to have the opportunity to go on the
+road and bring production stories to all of our users. We've had amazing
+speakers and turn out in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boston, and New
+York. But I wanted to make sure we reached more than just our coasts, so soon
+we'll be in
+[Minneapolis](http://www.joyent.com/noderoad/cities/minneapolis-6-17-2014) and
+I'll be returning to my home state of Ohio and doing an event in
+[Cincinnati](http://www.joyent.com/noderoad/cities/cincinnati-6-19-2014). The
+Node.js community is all over the world, and hopefully Node on the Road can
+reach as many of you as it can. Nominate your city to be a future stop on the
+Node.js on the Road series
+[here](http://www.joyent.com/noderoad/cities/suggest).
+
+These Node on the Road events are successful because of the incredible support
+from the community and the existing meetup organizations in their respective
+cities. But the biggest advantage is that the project gets to solicit feedback
+directly from our users about what is and isn't working for them in Node.js,
+what modules they're using, and where they need Node to do better.
+
+## Release schedules
+
+Some of the feedback we've received has been about the upgrade process for
+Node. Veteran Node.js alums will occasionally sit around campfires and tell the
+stories of when things would break every release, or how long they stayed on
+0.4 before upgrading to 0.6. Some production companies are still out there
+running on 0.8 afraid to make the jump to 0.10. While other companies advise
+people to avoid upgrading to a new release of a Node version until the patch
+number hits double digits. It's those sorts of stories that make it important
+for us to get the release for 0.12 right, from the get go.
+
+Node is in a fantastic place right now, it's maturing quickly and finding its
+footing in new environments with new users and new use cases. The expectation
+for Node is getting higher each day with every release. There are multiple
+interests at stake, keeping Node lean, keeping it up to date with languages and
+standards, keeping it fast, and balanced with keeping it stable such that we
+don't upset the adoption rate. That means Node needs to make the right choices
+that balance the needs of all of our users without closing the doors to others.
+
+All of these conversations are helping to shape the release process going
+forward, and helping to scope just what does go into a release and how fast
+people want to see those happen. In fact something we've been considering is
+eliminating the confusion around our Stable/Unstable branches, and instead
+moving to releases that are always stable. But it's important that the features
+and changes that go into a release are shaped by user feedback, which is why
+events like Node on the Road are vital.
+
+## Better Documentation
+
+Another key piece of feedback has consistently been around our documentation.
+Users need us to clean up our API reference documentation, there are lots of
+undocumented and under-documented methods and properties that are being used or
+should be used. Node needs to include what errors may be delivered as part of
+the operation of your application, as well as what methods will throw and under
+what circumstances.
+
+But mostly users are looking for more general purpose documentation that can
+help both new and veteran Node.js users be more productive with Node. And the
+people who are most equipped to provide that documentation are the users
+themselves who've already been successful.
+
+## Easier Contribution
+
+Aside from soliciting feedback from users of Node.js and bringing production
+stories to our users, Node on the Road has also been about highlighting the
+various ways you as a member of the community can contribute. There are many
+ways you can contribute from meetups and conferences, to publishing modules, to
+finding issues in modules or core, to fixing issues in modules or core, or even
+adding features to modules or core. Where ever you are passionate about Node.js
+there are ways you can contribute back to Node.
+
+Node.js has inherited many things from our largest dependency V8, we've adopted
+their build system GYP, we use their test runner (which is unfortunately in
+python), and when we were structuring the project we brought along the
+Contributor License Agreement (CLA) that Google uses to manage contributions
+for Chromium and V8. The CLA is there as a way for a project to audit itself
+and to give itself the opportunity to relicense itself in the future if
+necessary. Node.js though is distributed under the venerable
+[MIT](http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) license, and that's not going to
+change. The MIT license is one of the most permissible open source licenses out
+there, and has fostered a ton of development with Node.js and we want that to
+continue. 
+
+In an effort to make it easier for users to contribute to Node.js the project
+has decided to lift the requirement of signing the CLA before contributions are
+eligible for integration. Having to sign the CLA could at times be a stumbling
+block for a contribution. It could involve a long conversation with your legal
+department to ultimately contribute typo corrections.
+
+I'm excited to see what contributions will be coming from the community in the
+future, excited to see where our users take Node.js, and excited to be
+participating with all of you on this project.