From: Jasper van de Gronde <th.v.d.gronde@...528...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] plans on 0.49
I do have a few questions though. I love the idea to bring developers together, as I think this could indeed help increase and maintain motivation, as well as providing a moment to simply "get things done". However, what kind of numbers and funding are we talking about? If we want to meet physically the costs could be quite high. (And if we don't meet physically, then what is the funding for?)
That's where linux vendors come in. It's unlikely to fund a sprint with individual donations, but if we can get companies like Google, Canonical, Novell, Red Hat, etc. to get involved, things seem more feasible. Of course we have to do it first, but I'm sure that we have interesting things to offer to those companies: better, more integrated software for something as important as design is undoubtedly something their platforms (and their business) could benefit of.
Another option is to organize regional sprints. For instance, it's considerably cheaper (for the physical meeting) if the participants are all europeans, or all north-americans, etc. Of course people from other regions could follow the sprint and collaborate on-line. One sprint could be europe-based, the next in north-america, and so on. I guess that doing it this way costs would be reduced considerably, and people from other areas would still be able to join to the event on-line.
I can't talk about numbers because I don't know them. Probably LGM organization could give us some estimations about how much is involved so we can do some calculations and see what's possible and what not.
Also, what you describe still requires quite a bit of organization, how would you propose to deal with that? (Are you proposing to head up the operation?)
Not being a programmer and living in south america (where a pretty small amount of developers are) makes me a bad candidate for that, I guess. I commit myself to help in whatever is needed to materialize this project, but I'm sure there is a lot of people better prepared for the task than me. I think we should all discuss the organization details. I know it's not something easy to co-ordinate and I didn't think about all the details, but I'm sure that we as community can manage to make it work.
And how do we deal with disgruntled donors? If we define groups of features/fixes as targets, that's cool for helping focus donations and such, but afterward I am sure that some things won't have been addressed and people won't like that if they donated because of that specific item. This is of course not "fair", in the sense that we would be (and should be) clear about how this process works, but human psychology is hardly ever fair.
Well, first we have to define achievable goals. Being too ambitious and making a very interesting list of goals would of course get more funding but it would also increase the chance of disgruntled donors at the end. If the goals of the sprint are manageable and the resources and time are planned correctly, the outcome should be enough to make donors happy. Of course, s**t happens. Things can turn more difficult than expected and some goals could end up unfinished. I guess that commitment from the coders to give those unfinished goals exclusive priority for the next days/weeks after the event should be enough to make donors know that their money wasn't given in vain. I mean, if coders say "I commit myself to make my best to finish these tasks in the defined timeframe or, if it's not possible, in the following weeks" no donors should feel deceived if things don't turn out as expected after the sprint. I think it's just matter of good communication. First of all we should avoid the wrong conception that donors are paying for X feature. Donors would be contributing to make a sprint with specific goals happen and developers involved should commit to complete those goals. Sounds fair enough. :-)
Thanks for your comments, Jasper.