[Members] Re: disconnect from board to active developers

[Alex Deucher]

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

> Keith
>
>