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On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...2...> wrote:
My goal here is to get us to a point where the board doesn't have to be intimately involved in specific jobs and fundraisers, but can just sign off on an official policy for how they should be handled in general, and then let the work happen organically.
Definitely ideal.
Any project that remains on the list unfinished for 6 months becomes eligible for funding the work. (This is so that any proposed projects that are fun or easy get done by volunteers, and money can be focused on harder unsexy work, and to make abuse harder.) We'll call these eligible projects 'jobs'.
Here's my hesitation on the 6 month funding wait (at least for the first batch of ideas, or specific ones). If there is something that is in dire need of a rewrite or otherwise is a maintenance task that requires extensive knowledge of the codebase, I think we should not hold off on these potentially getting funded. What if one of those big tasks is identified and someone with the skill and knowledge finds the time that they won't have 6 months out? I do think it's preferable to have things done by volunteers, but I don't want us to miss out if those unappealing and less fun things can get completed.
Open Questions:
- Should fundraiser coordinators get remuneration of some sort, or is the ability to direct the funds they raise a sufficient reward?
I don't know that it's easy to decide this until we find out how much time is required... then again, they do really get to allocate things toward something that they might favor. :-/
- Who decides when a given job is "complete"? Do we need to have a separate reviewer role identified (analogous to GSoC mentor)? Should that person get some form of remuneration too? Should the role be interactive with the job performer, or an anonymous pass/fail?
Is this something that the fundraising coordinator should be tasked with or perhaps be the person who proposed the job be the one to review?
- Should jobs 'expire' after some period of time, with any allocated funds being freed up for other jobs and/or returned to the general fund?
I would lean toward yes for expiration. If there is no deadline to get donations in by, there is no demand to donate now. However, we'd really have to disclaimer up and down that it's not guaranteed to get funded, and unlike kickstarter, your money is transferred regardless of the campaign results.
- How do we prune out jobs that become irrelevant?
I think if it appears to have become irrelevant, we have the job proposer re-review the status and close it out as such. One question is what happens to funds acquired that were potentially going toward that job.
- What if someone (or multiple someones) handles the job without signing up for it?
This was a question I had related to the last question. What if the job became irrelevant because of overlap from another task? In that situation, perhaps if there were funds already allocated toward it, as a one time thank you, the coordinator could offer to pay a portion as a reward? My thought is that would raise awareness, but the dev(s) wouldn't be able to use the excuse again that they didn't know about the jobs.
I think that if it seems like the jobs thing is going to be a viable and healthy way to get things accomplished, we can be more vocal about it. To a good degree, our core devs should be fully aware of the list and the process. To devs seeking to get paid to work on any project that they're not familiar with (let's say by a 3rd party, privately), one would hope they would get in contact with the mailing list or a core developer first. Lastly, for new developers to the project, whether potential students for GSoC, or new faces who post patches in the tracker or link a branch they've been working on, we can make them aware of the list.
Just some thoughts...
Cheers, Josh