[Members] Re: disconnect from board to active developers

[Egbert Eich]

Hi Christoph!

Christoph Hellwig writes:

 > Having official sponsoring from the project governing body creates
 > a wide range of problems:
 > 
 >  - it creates a two class society
 >  - it makes people wait for some official to do the dirty work
 >  - last but not least it gives people beeing payid their code is going
 >    to go in no matter of the normal quality / community interaction
 >    requirements
 > 
 > because of that I think it's a very bad idea.

Your second statement could be extended: Hired developers are 
competing with the volunteers for the most interesting pieces. 
Establishing a community around their project may not be their
expertise and certainly isn't in their interest: 
making oneself indespensible by being the only one knowledgeable 
in a certain area will guarantee a continuous flow of funds.

The absence of a community however will render a project 
useless: no other project and certainly no vendor will adopt 
it. 
People understand to well that being at the mercy of a 
contractor is tantamount to using a piece of closed source 
software.
So this way we are likely to get more dead wales.

 > 
 > What generally works much better to get things solved is if an
 > interested third party sponsors developers.  That could be a google
 > SoC like thing, or a gnome-like bounty offered from people or companies
 > wanting to see a certain thing fixed.

A limited student focussed funding - for instance if the Foundation
started an SoC like program - may change this equation, although 
your second point above may still apply.
Therefore I agree that outside funded development is certainly
preferrable.

Cheers,
	Egbert.