Stan Shebs wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Timwi wrote:
There is nothing wrong with wanting to centrally
organise these
offers, nor is there anything wrong with allowing the community some
say over what the Wikimedia Foundation itself should offer.
Wake me when the discussion becomes substantive rather than speculative.
I think it necessarily has to be somewhat in the subjunctive - "if
the Foundation were to spend money on software development, how should
it go about that?" Right now the discussion is like a bunch of
staffers in the West Wing kicking around ideas, looking for something
good enough to take to the boss.
Well, I listen :-)
I hear that current situation is not efficient, and that bounty can make
it more efficient.
So, I wonder what else could make processus more efficient (and already,
several goog ideas have been thrown around by several people)
And I wonder if bounties would really make it more efficient as claimed.
I think it is perfectly correct some development would be speed up
compared to others, because of the financial motivation to work on one
task rather than another. So, in that sense, it would be more efficient.
There has been a lot say these days on how much efficient it would be. I
guess it depends a lot on the developer himself. But I trust that
generally, the job would be just as good.
However, success should not be measured only for its technical
consequences, but its social as well.
Consequences on the developer himself, who switch from the "we recognise
your value", to "we appreciate you reached the value we had set". A
Control somehow.
Consequences on other developers, since some are strongly opposed to the
principle, this might mean major dissension possibly.
Finally, consequences on the tissue of the community.
I tend to think that most caritative organisations, one day or another,
get some paid staff to get a few things rolling, while still very
strongly relying on a full set of volunteers. I guess the balance to
achieve makes this very difficult. And even more difficult for us, who
are on the internet, so likely to receive many hours of help from
volunteers.
Compared to most organisations, we will not be able to define "paid as
full time" and "volunteer as from time to time".
I think we all are giving very work, and we are numerous to give a
number of hours hardly reasonable :-) The last thing we want is to
alienate a set of the community for the "sake" of another group.
The last thing I want to hear is, as an argument for bounties, "we
should pay developers, because *they* give so much time and energy, that
they really deserve it". Many arguments for bounties are good, but this
one is just not. Because it immediately set a comparison with the other
groups and instill the idea that developers give more time and more
valuable time than others. This is a very bad idea.
An editor without any software to edit with, is no one.
A tech maintaining servers on which nothing is going on, is no one.
A developer improving a software that no one is using, is no one.
We have different tasks, but all of these tasks are important. And for a
body, spending 4 hours connected on the net, is 4 hours.
So, the interest of using bounties should be balanced with both
technical and social success.
One thing that I think people have danced around is
who's motivated
by what. If someone can't afford to do a piece of work for free, but
will do a great job for $500, they're not being evil or immoral; that
person has just put a price tag on their time. It's then up to the
Foundation to decide whether it wants the work badly enough to pay up,
or to wait for somebody to donate their time.
Yes, I also agree there is nothing immoral with that at all.
This just reflects different personal needs.
It seems like it would be easy enough for the
Foundation to put up
a list of wanted features with approximations to how much they're
willing to pay. The harder part is to negotiate for the work; the
more-capable people might charge more, but going cheaper could result
in an encyclopedia trashed by bad coding. But fundamentally it's the
same process as negotiating for hardware.
Stan
Though there are some exceptions (such as perhaps setting up the dues
system, which is likely to interest the foundation first hand), I think
this should not be a top down decision.
It is not to the foundation to decide which features are the best.
It is first to the editors and daily activity, to reveal needs.
Then to developers to analyse the problems, and come up with
propositions/solutions.
Then to developers to estimate their solution (prerequisite, how many of
hours, requirements, when could they take care of it, how much they
would ask to do it...).
Depending on this information, the foundation might decide that
apparently feature A is much more needed that feature B, and might use
means to push development of this feature first.