[Members] Re: disconnect from board to active developers

[Leon Shiman]

on Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:38:33 -0400 Alex Deucher wrote:
>
>On 10/19/06, Keith Whitwell <keith at tungstengraphics.com> wrote:
>> Daniel Stone wrote:
>> > Hi Alex,
>> >
>> > On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 04:12:21PM -0400, Alex Deucher wrote:
>> >> I haven't seen the budget numbers so I don't know how realistic this
>> >> would be, but would Xorg ever consider directly funding the
>> >> development of new drivers or significant infrastructual updates?  For
>> >> example xrandr++ or a real FB manager may have happened years ago if
>> >> it had been funded.  I don't want to take away from individual
>> >> contributors, but most of us only work on X in our spare time so it
>> >> often takes a big ouside contribution or a long period to time for
>> >> major needed changes to happen.
>> >
>> > Personally, I'd be extremely wary of anything like this.  To avoid the
>> > perception of just giving money to your mates (even if it's completely
>> > above-board, it does set a precedent that could be abused later), it
>> > would need to be:
>> >   - not a full-time stipend,
>> >   - covered by a mound of paperwork, including regular status work,
>> >   - subject to regular overview,
>> >   - something the community unanimously agrees on.
>> >
>> > However, there are some very important projects that just don't get the
>> > attention we need; the corporate body of support is quite narrow, as
>> > opposed to the extremely broad attention that projects like GNOME get,
>> > and we don't have enough hackers to have a kernel-like system either.
>> >
>> > So getting some of the talented community hackers working on projects
>> > through part-time funding certainly isn't the worst idea ever.  But it
>> > would take quite a lot to win me over at this stage.
>> >
>> > If you have a good idea, please submit a convincing proposal to the
>> > board.  It would, however, require strong support from the board, and
>> > basically unanimous support from the active community members, so we
>> > don't fall into the pit of favouritism/nepotism/whatever.
>> >
>> > I do sympathise with you, though; it's extremely frustrating to see 
some
>> > very promising projects drop away because the authors didn't have time,
>> > or because the company has changed priorities, or something similar.
>> > Unfortunately the bounty programs that were run in GNOME, Debian and
>> > Ubuntu (among others) a while back seem to have basically been an 
abject
>> > failure[0], because being able to pay small amounts of money (generally
>> > less than €500) to see important work done is a great idea.
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Daniel
>> >
>> > [0]: Because I think it's fundamentally the wrong model.  Most people
>> >      aren't drive-by hackers: either they will write on it anyway, or
>> >      need money to live on so they can give up their part-time job
>> >      that's getting them through uni, or whatever.  Bounties don't
>> >      provide enough money, but they do unfortunately get a lot of 
people
>> >      interested who can't follow through.  The failure rate was
>> >      extremely high.
>> >
>> >      I was funded by LinuxFund to do the modularisation work between
>> >      January and July 2004.  It wasn't a massive salary, and I 
certainly
>> >      worked more than the 20 hours a week, but having only that and uni
>> >      to take care of -- no other job -- was invaluable, and it 
certainly
>> >      wouldn't have been done that quickly if it wasn't for LF's 
support.
>> >
>> >      Unfortunately LinuxFund have now tanked quite badly.
>>
>> Maybe the approach should be to make more of an effort with Summer of 
Code?
>>
>> I wonder if it would be possible for X.org to sheild itself from charges
>> of nepotism by actually putting money *into* SoC, and having those guys
>> decide which (X.org related obviously) projects it gets spent on?
>>
>
>The SoC is a good tool, but it focuses more on learning than on the
>end product which is fine as that's it's goal.  The kind of things I
>was talking about are major architectural changes that would require
>experienced developers familiar with the code.  Perhaps the membership
>could vote on these sort of things and then we could take proposals
>from developers/development companies and vote to award contracts.
>OTOH, that may be more trouble/cost than it's worth and it's still not
>without the potential for controversy.
>
>Alex

I have wanted to see this happen for a long time. I think there are lots of 
ways to avoid conflicts of interest ("nepotism"). There just needs to be a 
mind set in the Board and in the membership that this is good policy. I 
think it is very do-able. Daniel's concerns notwithstanding, I think it 
would have a very positive effect on the technology and on increasing the 
number of participants. I also believe that a clear policy would inspire 
contributions to fund the work. 

Leon