Adding first Selenium 4 blog post by Simon

Author: diemol

site_source_files/content/blog/2020/what-is-coming-in-selenium-4-how-can-i-contribute.md

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+Description = "What’s Coming in Selenium 4: How Can I Contribute?"
+Title = "What’s Coming in Selenium 4: How Can I Contribute?"
+Date = 2020-11-02
+Author = "shs96c"
+AuthorLink = "https://twitter.com/shs96c"
+tags = ["selenium"]
+categories = ["general", "releases"]
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+
+>In this new blog series all about the upcoming release of Selenium 4, Simon Stewart will 
+>cover how the Selenium project works, who is involved, how you can get involved, and a 
+>sneak peek at what’s new in Selenium 4. 
+
+As the lead of the Selenium project, I wanted to kick off a new blog series leading up to 
+the release of Selenium 4. During this series, I’ll talk all about how the Selenium project 
+works, who is involved, how you—yes, you!—can get involved, and we’ll get a sneak peek at 
+what’s new in Selenium 4. I've been speaking about this off and on for a while, but now 
+the 4.0 release is looming I wanted to start sharing in more depth. 
+
+In this first post, we’ll start off with a brief discussion about how the Selenium project 
+itself runs and who does what, because that’s a really helpful piece to understand how and 
+why things happen the way they do on the project. In future posts, we’ll look at the new IDE, 
+and then we’ll talk about Selenium 4 in more depth, including the fact that it should be a 
+drop-in replacement for you. I’ll also review some new features that we’ve added to Selenium 
+4, and talk a bit about the modernized Selenium Grid. So let’s get started! 
+
+## About the Selenium Project
+
+Selenium is an Open Source project. It's run under the aegis of the Software Freedom 
+Conservancy (SFC). The SFC is a group dedicated to pushing forward Free and Open Source 
+software. Besides Selenium, they have a handful of projects you may have heard of, including 
+Samba, Mercurial and Git. The SFC allows us to focus on writing code and fixing bugs by 
+handling all the legal and financial stuff we’re not good at. They’re the ones that help 
+us negotiate contracts for when we want to run SeleniumConf, for example.
+
+Acting as a bridge between the project and the SFC is the Project Leadership Committee 
+(PLC). Currently, it’s made up of Jim Evans, Alexei Barantsev, Marcus Merrell, Manoj Kumar, 
+and myself. What do we do? Effectively, the PLC is about providing a smaller group of people 
+for the SFC to talk to when decisions need to be made about funding a conference, or how 
+best to respond to sponsorship agreements. Because we like to do as much work in the open 
+as possible, you can find us on the `#selenium-plc` Slack channel, and almost every 
+conversation and topic is discussed here.
+
+One of the key qualifications for being on the PLC is a demonstrated commitment to helping 
+the Selenium project improve and succeed, and we recognise that the project is more than just 
+“code.” It’s a community, and the make up of the PLC reflects that.
+
+The Technical Leadership Committee (TLC) includes the people who set the technical direction 
+for the project. If you come over to the Selenium Slack, you can find the `#selenium-tlc` channel, 
+which is where a lot of the technical conversations happen for the project. The TLC includes Jim 
+Evans, Alexei Barantsev, David Burns, Diego Molina, Titus Fortner, and me.
+
+How do you get on the TLC? Although the project governance document goes into more detail, 
+it can be summed up as simply as someone who’s demonstrated technical leadership on the project, 
+over an extended period of time. Just as with the PLC, being on the TLC doesn’t give someone more 
+authority, but they’re the ones who can merge PRs, and who can (if need be) commit directly to the tree.
+
+Again, the TLC tries to do as much work as possible in the open. If you’re ever interested in watching 
+the design discussions, or asking why a bit of the Selenium code base is structured the way it is, then 
+come and join us in the `#selenium-tlc` Slack channel. There’s normally someone from the project there 
+who’ll be able to answer your questions!
+
+I wanted to share how the project works for one simple reason: to highlight one of the really important 
+things with Open Source, which is that anyone can contribute! You don't need to be throwing code around 
+in order to be contributing, and [you don’t need to be special](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ-BfM97PZk)
+in order to contribute your time and effort.
+
+So obviously there's the people running the projects and writing code, but we couldn't do that all on our own. 
+Every release includes contributions from a variety of people, not just the core development team. Also, we're 
+always happy to accept patches. If you're not quite sure where to start, I recommend you head to our 
+[GitHub page](https://github.com/seleniumhq/selenium/) and take a look at the project tab. That’s where you 
+can see the things that need to be done and what we're working on.
+
+The other way to get involved is the way that everyone used to get involved with Open Source, which is by 
+what's known as “scratching your own itch”. It's if there's something about the project, something about the 
+product you think could be a little bit better, download the source, edit it, and then send us a PR.
+
+We encourage you to get involved and contribute! On the Selenium website, there is a 
+[page](https://www.selenium.dev/governance/) that outlines in detail the steps to join the Selenium team. 
+Join the Selenium Slack channel to interact with us and ask questions. If you want to discuss something, 
+or if you don't understand why the code is written the way it is, feel free to come on to that Slack channel 
+and talk to us. Also, if you'd like to see how the decision making is made, then please do feel free to come 
+on to the `#selenium-tlc` or the `#selenium-plc` channels to see those groups. Because we're Open Source, we 
+try and do everything in the open.
+
+If you’d like to put faces to people’s Slack or IRC handles, then please note that there’s a regular team 
+meeting every other Thursday on Google Meet at 4:30pm (UK time!) We tend to just chat and discuss everything 
+from the project to the weather, but that’s a great way to get to know people a little better! :)
+
+Finally, if you’re having trouble getting to grips with the Selenium code base, then please do come and ask us 
+for help. We’ve done our best to make the on-ramp as easy to take as possible, but the project can seem complicated 
+and daunting when you’re getting started. We’re here to help!
+
+I hope you enjoyed this intro to the Selenium project. Next week, we’ll talk about why the major version bump to 
+Selenium 4. Stay tuned!
+
+
+
+*This was originally posted at https://saucelabs.com/blog/whats-coming-in-selenium-4-how-can-i-contribute*