Down at ApacheCon at our BoF we had a good discussion about what might help people who want to contribute to Derby but feel they don't have the database internals background needed. It was generally recognized that there is a pretty hefty learning curve to be able to work on some of the core parts of Derby such as the SQL compiler and the kernel. The skills and background for someone writing database applications is pretty different from someone writing database internals.

The problem is that Derby support can not scale to handle the growing number of users unless more members of the community are able to get to know the code and start contributing.

One thought we had was that those of us who know a certain area of Derby can make ourselves available to mentor/provide guidance to those who want to work in that area but don't feel qualified.

For example, let's say there is a bug in the compiler that is causing me problems. I log the bug, but nobody seems to be responding (scratch your own itch and all that). I could send an email out saying "I'd like to get this fixed, and am willing to do the work, but I don't know anything about the compiler. Is anyone willing to help walk me through this?" Then someone who knows the compiler can volunteer to help.

Alternately, someone who knows the compiler can respond to a JIRA item saying "I don't have time to implement, test, and document this, but I'd be willing to help walk you through how you might do this."

I think this is pretty workable. It does take a willingness on both sides -- from the specialists to not try to fix everything themselves (not scalable long-term) and instead make themselves available to provide guidance, and from the non-specialists to jump in with the support of a specialist.