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666threesixes666
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

crowd sourced coffers, redundancy seagoon.... we should work on a mesh/all of the above approach. need git wiki better, ill handle that, need git ebuild, kitten handles that, come together and at the end of the day things get done one way or another. many means to our ends. i like the idea of subscription forums, and industrial support.... manned by iamben/seagoon harvesting revenues.... i dont see industrial demand until an automated install script with preferred choices presents its self. fs 2 loader 2 kernel generation 2 stage3 2 root password..... ext, grub2, script to insert seed / determine hardware... insert hardware configuration, unwrap stage 3... bam console login & industrial demand explodes as do revenues.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yngwin wrote:
NeddySeagoon wrote:
I don't think Gentoo would benefit from full time paid developers. The downsides well outweigh the potential advantages.

Why would you say that? I think it would be a huge benefit for Gentoo. If I would have the money, I would immediately employ knowledgeable developers such as bonsaikitten, pesa, and flameeyes.

And so the popcon begins! ;) It sounds like you're not considering the downsides, since you haven't addressed any of them.
Here's one that pops into mind: "Once you start down this route, you end up with a popularity contest, like it or not. And suddenly the focus isn't on what the tree's doing, but who's the "most useful" which can vary with the phase of the moon, and brings with it all sorts of jockeying for position, much worse than we already have now. At least atm it's just young males being young males; imagine if it had real-world consequence."
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That said, I don't think it's a good idea to let the Council or Foundation decide on that. Historically they have been too slow-moving, and reactionary rather than visionary. A separate company or non-profit would be better, I think.

How about we start by paying Council during their term? That makes the popularity contest transparent at least.
NeddySeagoon wrote:
Who pays for this 'emergent work'?

Ah Contract Law, so much fun.. ;-)
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL wrote:
Ah Contract Law, so much fun.. ;-)


You can't avoid contracts of employment with err ... employees.
... and nobody cares about employment law until someone gets fired, then it gets very messy and very expensive.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 4:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You just cannot gave any money to any devs ; else you would create problem only.
popular DE : Gives money to gnome3/kde dev ? so xfce dev sucks ? And you will end with gnome or kde dev only.
Gives money to amd64 team ? So the guy that do ia64 doesn't deserve money because it's not your favourite/popular arch ; while the guy might be alone and really need more help than the crowded amd64 team...

You can only gives an amount of money and redistribute to any active gentoo devs just by dividing it ; without including any other aspect (number of commit...). Just a rough redistribution. As a thank you for been one, huge or not contributor.

And if one wants to really employ a dev, i would pickup flameeyes too ; not to ask him to wrote any line of code : just to ask him to kick some gentoo devs ass that really need it.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
And if one wants to really employ a dev, i would pickup flameeyes too ; not to ask him to wrote any line of code : just to ask him to kick some gentoo devs ass that really need it.

Oh please; IMO he's behaved like a complete asshat on the ML over the last 2 or 3 years. He drops in surly emails with zero content, just two-line diktats from on-high as if he were some sort of God of Gentoo, from my reading. He needs to get over himself, afaic, not get another boost to his ego.

I agree though, it only causes problems. And part of that is the jockeying for position that is inevitable, with people pumping up their faves, or denigrating others, just as you probably think I have done unfairly. But I'm more than happy to dig out those emails should someone want to make an issue of it, not that it's my idea of fun. (And what's wrong with commenting on developer behaviour in a chat-forum following a distro? We might not agree with each other, but it's fair comment, and I'm entitled to express my opinion, same as sports-fans on a football-site commenting on player behaviour. People need to relax a bit, and take things on the chin, instead of reaching for the big-guns. They have a habit of going off in your face.)

Either way, the whole contest becomes political, and elections as we have them in politics tend to give us the people we really don't want as leaders, and serve as a sideshow ("bread and circuses") which means people don't see the real crime (financial fraud at the heart of it all, but that's another topic, for OTW most likely.) My point is that it takes up an awful lot of time and energy, none of which is spent improving things, or in our case the software.

I mean, aren't you right now wanting to argue with my opinion of Flameeyes? Imagine that feeling multiplied by 150, then by the number of users interested in discussing Gentoo, who'd get involved with a discussion of whom to fund.

FTR: I have a lot of respect for Flameeyes; we even bought him a book on his wishlist several years ago (my boss paid for it) to encourage his work in gentoo. I just don't like the way he's acted on-list in the last couple of years, where he's supposed to be representing Gentoo, and he had the opportunity to make his case, not just act like everyone should follow his orders because he gave them. My opinion of that behaviour is not going to change. You are ofc welcome to yours, on whatever subject. :)

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PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 7:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
You can't avoid contracts of employment with err ... employees.
... and nobody cares about employment law until someone gets fired, then it gets very messy and very expensive.

Exactly. It's a lot of time, expense and hassle, and yet it must be done right, as it's people's livelihoods we're talking about.

I think specific work like you said would be good, but based on particular areas as outlined before. For instance, infra could have hired (or the trustees on their behalf, perhaps delegated via Gentoo eV) one or two consultants for 3 months, with an option for 6, and review every month, though every week or two for first month, in order to get the git migration done about 3 years ago.

That would have made a major difference to workflow, and reduced a lot of time spent imo, as well as led to increased productivity as it becomes much easier to accept pull requests for specific ebuilds, since it's cheap to make a branch for the bit of work you're doing atm. So users would have been able to contribute more.

Then again, there's only so many ebuilds in the world ;)
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 1:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
You just cannot gave any money to any devs ; else you would create problem only.

You can only gives an amount of money and redistribute to any active gentoo devs just by dividing it

A small amount of money for everyone is close to useless, because it does not allow people to spend more time developing Gentoo.

There are a few things we all use. One example is portage itself. Why not start with those things? And in the potential case that there are multiple people who actually want to do that work full-time, the people who donate can still take that decision. There are already quite a few rules for taking decisions as a German g.e.V. (the translation of that is roughly “nonprofit working for public benefit”), so it’s not like we have to reinvent all wheels.

That could start by offering someone that he could take one year off his job to work on Gentoo full-time. I guess that some (Gentoo-using) companies would actually give him or her the guarantee to be able to come back afterwards.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 11:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ArneBab wrote:
There are a few things we all use. One example is portage itself. Why not start with those things?

At first, because many devs would switch to dev portage, that would be good as your goal is met, but that would mean they aren't doing what they were doing before ; causing a lost.
At second, because even it's gentoo packager, by itself it does nothing, you don't even need portage to install something, and you won't do anything if you just use portage.
So portage install programs for you in an easy way, but you will use those programs, not portage. Portage isn't making your job done, the programs you install without/with portage are doing the job.
So you higher portage value by lowering other programs value (the ones you need to do the job). Bad idea.
Even just trying to set money on something highly specific (here's one good example: re-increase portage speed as larry is a fat cow) you are putting some devs out of the road. Not every dev are doing python, why only python dev would get money ? Why that dev that is doing a great job in C couldn't get some money...

So no, gives a few amount to everyone, to cheers everyone up a small small small bit, instead of trying to cheer only few up. There's no real value to cheer up 1 guy and lowering happiness of 99 others, i prefer cheer up the 100 guys (even if the amount is so low it would only makes them smile).
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 15, 2014 9:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
So you higher portage value by lowering other programs value (the ones you need to do the job). Bad idea.
Even just trying to set money on something highly specific (here's one good example: re-increase portage speed as larry is a fat cow) you are putting some devs out of the road. Not every dev are doing python, why only python dev would get money ? Why that dev that is doing a great job in C couldn't get some money...

Exactly: as soon as there's allocation of resource, the questions begin, and frankly we don't need the hassle. WRT portage you're right: if one were financing Gentoo as a development project, one would actually fund pkgcore right now, to get it to full tree capability, and retire portage as soon as viable.
Quote:
So no, gives a few amount to everyone, to cheers everyone up a small small small bit, instead of trying to cheer only few up. There's no real value to cheer up 1 guy and lowering happiness of 99 others, i prefer cheer up the 100 guys (even if the amount is so low it would only makes them smile).

Heh I like that idea.

I guess the question is: do we need to pay people to get them to work on Gentoo? And the answer to that is: "No" since most developers are in Uni, or just left, and trying to make a name for themselves. Those that are older are already using Gentoo in their work, and there are other people who get paid to work with Gentoo and develop ebuilds, and indeed more interesting stuff, without ever becoming devs at all (I met one a few months ago, and he's being paid to do specific work with binpkgs because his employer needs things working as part of another project: he's not being paid to become an ebuild developer, although they are ofc using ebuilds, as that's not very relevant to the project.) As you said, ebuilds are just a means to get working programs onto our machines, and it's the programs themselves that we want.

Financing would be useful for things like infra, and to get specific work done. Personally if I were funding Gentoo, I'd pay the forum moderators first, as they are what makes the Community work. Then I would pay infra, and bug-wranglers/ATs, all three on an ongoing basis, and finally I'd pay for specific work, like the git migration, and pkgcore, that everyone has wanted for over 5 years.

No offence, but ebuilds aren't really what I'd call programming: they're bash scriptlets, and most of the developers I've encountered seem to take a perverse pride in not being very good at bash, almost as if it were beneath them. We see the same mentality in all the Linux distros who had no idea how to write shell, blaming shell for their woeful start-up times, and using that as a justification for systemd. OFC if you're crap at something, make no attempt to learn it, and instead blunder around feeling resentful about it, then you're not going to produce very good work.. doesn't mean the language is at fault, by any means.

I think we're always going to get ebuild devs, for that reason: it's an easy way in. It means you're working on a real distro, and in collaboration with the upstream projects you like. It's not very hard, but it means you're getting exposure to build-systems and to install situations you would never otherwise encounter. And it establishes your reputation, so that you're already taken more seriously just for being a Gentoo dev, and now have an in with other projects, so whatever you want to get involved with, it's relatively easier for you.

It's not a guarantee of anything ofc: you still have to make yourself useful to wherever it is you want to go. But AFAIC that's why most developers do it, and that's the payback, for maintaining a few build-scripts, with most of the work done for you.

Should we pay in that situation? No, I don't think we should. Apart from not needing to, it's a lot of hassle, and changes the relaxed nature of things. A lot of devs like the fact that it's voluntary, which means no-one can force them to do anything: employment by definition is being paid to do what you're told.

For supporting work that makes that possible, by all means.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
ArneBab wrote:
There are a few things we all use. One example is portage itself. Why not start with those things?

So you higher portage value by lowering other programs value (the ones you need to do the job). Bad idea.

Why does the value of other programs get lowered, if one program is financed?

If a company decides to fund pkgcore development, does that lower the value of portage?
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL wrote:
I guess the question is: do we need to pay people to get them to work on Gentoo? And the answer to that is: "No" since most developers are in Uni, or just left, and trying to make a name for themselves. Those that are older are already using Gentoo in their work, and there are other people who get paid to work with Gentoo and develop ebuilds, and indeed more interesting stuff, without ever becoming devs at all (I met one a few months ago, and he's being paid to do specific work with binpkgs because his employer needs things working as part of another project…


We had requests for better binpkgs for years, and now a company steps up and the binpkg-support comes? That has a really bad ring to me. It shows exactly why I wish for more funding from normal users.

We could have had this years ago if 10% of the users paid 1€ a month and we had a transparent way how a community-paid developer could state “these are the open bugs for which I have the skills to work on - please vote with which I should start”.

I much prefer paying 1€ a month than haviing companies push Gentoo into directions they need. I as private user do not have exactly the same needs as big companies.

One other thing I would love to pay for are people who ensure that the tree is tested and stable for my configuration - I don’t care whether working on ebuilds is real programming: If someone ensures that I don’t have to spend hours to fix portage hickups which block my updates due to some useflag-breakage, that’s worth paying money to me. I want my computer running without fail and without having to fix stuff I did not break myself - I want it running as it did up to half a year ago.

Getting in a new program or a useful update, that gives satisfaction by itself. For testing lots and lots of configurations and corner-cases, that’s not necessarily the case - especially if it’s proactive instead of reacting to bug-reports.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ArneBab wrote:
We had requests for better binpkgs for years, and now a company steps up and the binpkg-support comes? That has a really bad ring to me. It shows exactly why I wish for more funding from normal users.

We could have had this years ago if 10% of the users paid 1€ a month and we had a transparent way how a community-paid developer could state “these are the open bugs for which I have the skills to work on - please vote with which I should start”.

I much prefer paying 1€ a month than haviing companies push Gentoo into directions they need. I as private user do not have exactly the same needs as big companies.

Well I don't personally think the binpkg support is there even now, and sure I've wanted it better for years. Not enough though, to do much about it. And that's the real essence of this to me: Gentoo works well enough, that if you step back and compare it to running any other distro, instead of just in its own context, then you realise the reason we don't have those things is because there really isn't that much need for them. Yes we have uses for them, but if it were really essential, either you've already sorted out your binhosts for your organisation, or you're using a bindist.

I don't actually care about binpkgs enough, since the real appeal of Gentoo is precisely to compile to your specification, not anyone else's. So the most you really want is to set up the binhost on your network, not use someone else's, though tinderboxes can be handy for testing install scripts (which is why update has supported multiple binhosts for several years. I expect that's unnecessary nowadays with the new repo.conf stuff, but not had occasion to worry about it.)
Quote:
One other thing I would love to pay for are people who ensure that the tree is tested and stable for my configuration - I don’t care whether working on ebuilds is real programming: If someone ensures that I don’t have to spend hours to fix portage hickups which block my updates due to some useflag-breakage, that’s worth paying money to me. I want my computer running without fail and without having to fix stuff I did not break myself - I want it running as it did up to half a year ago.

Sure, but it's not a question of whether that has any value to us (which distracts into the emotive question of whether we "should" pay, which leads to herd mentality and exhortations to immediate action), but what is the best way to ensure its delivery. There's already plenty of payback for ebuild-developers, or they wouldn't be doing it. Ebuilds are not where we need funding, by any means, and in fact I think it would lead to much worse results, given the audience and their level of maturity. They jockey for position far too much as it is; with money in the mix, I think it would swiftly descend into even worse levels of bravado and front, none of which is conducive to good development.
Quote:
Getting in a new program or a useful update, that gives satisfaction by itself. For testing lots and lots of configurations and corner-cases, that’s not necessarily the case - especially if it’s proactive instead of reacting to bug-reports.

Yes, but it's the users who do most of that. Always has been. I'm all for paying serious bug-wranglers like jakub was, as pointed out above. Ebuilds simply do not need funding like infra and the boring stuff does, since ebuilds are what everyone wants to work on. They're easy as well, and testing in esoteric configurations does not happen on the ebuild developer's machine. All software is a collaboration between developers and users, free software even more so, and Gentoo perhaps most of all.

Please don't misconstrue me: I am not saying we don't need ebuilds by any means, nor that there is no skill involved, or that people don't have to respond to those bugs to fix them. Just that funding their development is both not required and not a positive move either: I don't think it will lead to better results, by any means. Far better to acknowledge that people have their own reasons for working on them, including their careers as well as the altruistic element, and simply needing a working distro.

It's not really that relevant what those reasons are, except to the individual concerned, and perhaps people collaborating with them, so long as Gentoo as a whole is a viable distro.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 9:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL wrote:
Yes, but it's the users who do most of that. Always has been. I'm all for paying serious bug-wranglers like jakub was, as pointed out above. Ebuilds simply do not need funding like infra and the boring stuff does, since ebuilds are what everyone wants to work on. They're easy as well, and testing in esoteric configurations does not happen on the ebuild developer's machine. All software is a collaboration between developers and users, free software even more so, and Gentoo perhaps most of all.

Please don't misconstrue me: I am not saying we don't need ebuilds by any means, nor that there is no skill involved, or that people don't have to respond to those bugs to fix them. Just that funding their development is both not required and not a positive move either: I don't think it will lead to better results, by any means. Far better to acknowledge that people have their own reasons for working on them, including their careers as well as the altruistic element, and simply needing a working distro.

I hope that I never said anywhere in this thread that we should base payment on the language used for development.

I think the biggest problem in this thread is trying to control tightly what people get paid for. If there’s a developer who has done useful work for Gentoo in the last years, why should their contribution become more useful when suddenly we tell them step-by-step what to do?

Money gives them more time to do what they have been doing for years. And when they fuck up repeatedly, it’s easy to stop the contract. But when they keep doing useful work, the worst thing we can do is to tell them “now we are your employer: Obey us!”

And we will have to raise tons of money before we run out of already trusted developers with a solid track record of knowing how they can best help Gentoo users.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 1:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember when Thunar at upstream were still stuck at using the now removed from Portage HAL (sys-apps/hal) it was only fixed because someone paid hard cash (anonymous donator) to port it to gnome-base/gvfs, and thus, udisks and finally udev.
I don't think targeted donations like that, are bad at all, I remember being grateful to whoever donated that money to him. Like, a lot.

No, I'm not saying anyone should pay me, I'm just saying, sometimes some cash makes whole of difference for motivation, I would certainly spend some if I had some to spare, specially to Xfce devs.

I work on things because I directly use them, either for myself or as part of an reallife job I do, sometimes when I'm bored, I push things for others, I consider it like a game where you get enjoyment from
passing a level, accomplishing something.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 12:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ssuominen wrote:
I'm just saying, sometimes some cash makes whole of difference for motivation

The problem is that it remove previous motivation to replace it with a new one : money.
And once previous motivation (fun, fame...) is gone for money motivation, you can only feed that motivation with... more money.

Don't give drug to someone, he will only keep walking if you keep feeding him with drug. And money is addictive.
There's a difference between "hey ssuominen here's a few bucks, why? for being a gentoo dev" and "ssuominen we will gave you xxx amount if you fix that thing". The first version you get few bucks as a thank you, the second one, you will earn money if you do that task, and to get the money, you will drop any other tasks that won't gave you money to only work on the one with the reward ; worst, once done, you will look at previous tasks and pfffff no money to fix them (see, previous motivation is now dead)... And because men are men, you will also have some dev that will fix something but delay the fixing release, who knows!?, maybe someone will put money on the fix they have just made...
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
ssuominen wrote:
I'm just saying, sometimes some cash makes whole of difference for motivation

The problem is that it remove previous motivation to replace it with a new one : money.
And once previous motivation (fun, fame...) is gone for money motivation, you can only feed that motivation with... more money.

Don't give drug to someone, he will only keep walking if you keep feeding him with drug. And money is addictive.
There's a difference between "hey ssuominen here's a few bucks, why? for being a gentoo dev" and "ssuominen we will gave you xxx amount if you fix that thing". The first version you get few bucks as a thank you, the second one, you will earn money if you do that task, and to get the money, you will drop any other tasks that won't gave you money to only work on the one with the reward ; worst, once done, you will look at previous tasks and pfffff no money to fix them (see, previous motivation is now dead)... And because men are men, you will also have some dev that will fix something but delay the fixing release, who knows!?, maybe someone will put money on the fix they have just made...


I suppose it could turn out like that. However, I don't find it likely. I don't see myself dropping anything I maintain, because I also use, and thus, need them. I guess all that depends on the person. If someone would pay me
to eg. commit new desktop like Trinity to Portage, I would do it with the time I would otherwise use on useless things like relaxing watching TV and such.

Oh well, humans are different, and I get what you mean...
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
ssuominen wrote:
I'm just saying, sometimes some cash makes whole of difference for motivation

The problem is that it remove previous motivation to replace it with a new one : money.
And once previous motivation (fun, fame...) is gone for money motivation, you can only feed that motivation with... more money.

I once used that argument, but research showed that it is not true for free software developers (at least as they are employed in most companies): http://draketo.de/light/english/motivation-and-payment#fn:why-hackers-do

Quote:

We find […], that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver. The source and intensity of motivation of free software developers does not differ significantly between people who work for hire and people who work without payment. From Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects by Karim R. Lakhani and Robert G Wolf


It seems that companies employing free software developers do something right here.

Prior research showed that if you get paid for the performance in the task, that reduces your intrinsic motivation. If you work for hire, that does not mean that you get paid per task. Ideally you get a permanent position: It is known since the 80's, that a permanent position with fixed payment which is not contingent on job-performance does not affect intrinsic motivation.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 10:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ArneBab wrote:
It is known since the 80's, that a permanent position with fixed payment which is not contingent on job-performance does not affect intrinsic motivation.

It was known well before the 80's that slavery does not affect intrinsic motivation.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ArneBab wrote:
steveL wrote:
Yes, but it's the users who do most of that. Always has been. I'm all for paying serious bug-wranglers like jakub was, as pointed out above. Ebuilds simply do not need funding like infra and the boring stuff does, since ebuilds are what everyone wants to work on. They're easy as well, and testing in esoteric configurations does not happen on the ebuild developer's machine. All software is a collaboration between developers and users, free software even more so, and Gentoo perhaps most of all.

Please don't misconstrue me: I am not saying we don't need ebuilds by any means, nor that there is no skill involved, or that people don't have to respond to those bugs to fix them. Just that funding their development is both not required and not a positive move either: I don't think it will lead to better results, by any means. Far better to acknowledge that people have their own reasons for working on them, including their careers as well as the altruistic element, and simply needing a working distro.

I hope that I never said anywhere in this thread that we should base payment on the language used for development.

I don't know what you're talking about now. I never mentioned language at all, so whatever point you think you are answering, it's not one I made.
Quote:
I think the biggest problem in this thread is trying to control tightly what people get paid for. If there’s a developer who has done useful work for Gentoo in the last years, why should their contribution become more useful when suddenly we tell them step-by-step what to do?

It doesn't so, how does it help anything? Further I don't agree with you about the biggest problem. But that you're now talking in terms of "tight control" shows the issue that I and others have been alluding to. The nature of everything changes.
Quote:
Money gives them more time to do what they have been doing for years. And when they fuck up repeatedly, it’s easy to stop the contract. But when they keep doing useful work, the worst thing we can do is to tell them “now we are your employer: Obey us!”

Yes, so why do you think that doing exactly that is going to make things better than they are now?

It sounds like "there are all these areas where it would be good to have improvement, so let's fund them." But if they were really that important, someone would work on them, or indeed a company would fund a programmer to fix things for their situation, which improves things for everyone, due to the license. And that does happen. I get the impression that it's more about the things you think would be good, from the discussion so far; you want certain things fixed or done differently.

To my mind you'd be better off trying to actually get those specific things done, in collaboration with other users, who as a collective are very knowledgeable, and typically much older and more experienced than ebuild developers. At the same time, busy with jobs etc, so I get where you're coming from; I just think we must have enough free time between us. After all we spend so long typing text into an internet chat forum ;-)
Quote:
And we will have to raise tons of money before we run out of already trusted developers with a solid track record of knowing how they can best help Gentoo users.

The point is that they're not really doing it for that reason; people don't feel loyalty to more than a group of about 150, they simply can't. It's a physiological limitation; that's why it takes so much propaganda and mythologising to make a nation. As discussed people have various motivations, most commonly to try to make a reputation when they face the prospect of leaving education and getting a job. And people usually have more than one motivation: they've already self-selected as geeks to want to work on software. So they enjoy it, and that's why they want a job in it. Some I would say get a kick out of power, and being able to get others to do things "their" way. Others from feeling like they've been useful. The list goes on, and why they're here isn't that important: just that they produce, and are not embarrassing the collective.

Gentoo effectively uses their youth and energy, while giving them the base to move forward in their careers from, as well as supplying them with the best development platform around. They already get an awful lot out of the equation.

Like I said, I'm not averse to paying for specific work that needs doing professionally, so that everyone can move on without waiting 5 years, like the git migration. Nor to paying for the most boring areas that no-one wants to discuss until they go wrong, like infra, or have a complaint, like moderation. Ebuild development is simply not in need of payment to get people to work on it. It's the most glamorous part, which is why we have so many primadonnas involved with it, all trying to be alpha dog. It's also the easiest, since the whole point of ebuild.sh and associated eclasses is to make it simple to write ebuilds.

Eclass development is only marginally more difficult, though the standard of bash is pretty laughable to an experienced or professional scripter. Unfortunately the brash, puerile and sometimes abusive behaviour of the collective puts many of those off even participating.

If you want to improve Gentoo, you should start there, as it's what hurts us most of all. I've lost count of the number of people I've met on irc who say they'd love to help out, and would have, but the snake-pit atmosphere of the list puts them off. Mock-indignation and ritualistic incantation of how we all love users every once in a while, typically after a round of beating up on them, notwithstanding.

The older devs I've spoken to know full well it's a problem, but content themselves with ruminating on the foolishness of youth, instead of leading by and with example.

So it goes on, and the young bloods come in, establish a rep, and move on. Or stick around to ruminate in turn. Because "that's not technical" we can pretend it doesn't matter, until it's time for us to act hurt at someone responding in kind, when suddenly emotional issues are very important, and must be treated with all the respect their fragile egos require. If it's their emotions, that is.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

steveL wrote:
ArneBab wrote:
I hope that I never said anywhere in this thread that we should base payment on the language used for development.

I don't know what you're talking about now. I never mentioned language at all, so whatever point you think you are answering, it's not one I made.


It is about the usage of Bash in the context of Gentoo, in specific a correlation between improvement of Gentoo and the quality of code; as that could determine a payment base in prejudgment, which is scary.

steveL wrote:
Quote:
And we will have to raise tons of money before we run out of already trusted developers with a solid track record of knowing how they can best help Gentoo users.

The point is that they're not really doing it for that reason; people don't feel loyalty to more than a group of about 150, they simply can't.


Dunbar's number is about stable relationships. You can help more people than that number, as help is orthogonal to a relationship; like you can help a lot of strangers on the street that you'll never see again. Your loyalty is different from the suggested comfortability, as loyalism is orthogonal to stability; you can help strangers on a daily basis, but the other strangers that were elsewhere when there was help will take time to recognize you for something they are yet to see.

steveL wrote:
As discussed people have various motivations, most commonly to try to make a reputation when they face the prospect of leaving education and getting a job. And people usually have more than one motivation: they've already self-selected as geeks to want to work on software. So they enjoy it, and that's why they want a job in it. Some I would say get a kick out of power, and being able to get others to do things "their" way. Others from feeling like they've been useful. The list goes on, and why they're here isn't that important: just that they produce, and are not embarrassing the collective.

Gentoo effectively uses their youth and energy, while giving them the base to move forward in their careers from, as well as supplying them with the best development platform around. They already get an awful lot out of the equation.


To view it in an entirely different way, consider the effects of gamification; for others contributing to Gentoo is orthogonal to their job, and they get an enjoyment out of making stuff work and providing support for it.

steveL wrote:
Like I said, I'm not averse to paying for specific work that needs doing professionally, so that everyone can move on without waiting 5 years, like the git migration. Nor to paying for the most boring areas that no-one wants to discuss until they go wrong, like infra, or have a complaint, like moderation. Ebuild development is simply not in need of payment to get people to work on it. It's the most glamorous part, which is why we have so many primadonnas involved with it, all trying to be alpha dog. It's also the easiest, since the whole point of ebuild.sh and associated eclasses is to make it simple to write ebuilds.


Gentoo needs more manpower, which is way more important than more money; putting money on a single part doesn't improve Gentoo as a whole, neither does splitting the money across everyone or anything in between as the money loses its effect that way. Putting more manpower and money on recruitment could still be a good idea in that context; looking at one of the bigger companies, Google has a lot of recruiters and have quite a pool such that running out of people becomes impossible.

steveL wrote:
Eclass development is only marginally more difficult, though the standard of bash is pretty laughable to an experienced or professional scripter. Unfortunately the brash, puerile and sometimes abusive behaviour of the collective puts many of those off even participating.

If you want to improve Gentoo, you should start there, as it's what hurts us most of all. I've lost count of the number of people I've met on irc who say they'd love to help out, and would have, but the snake-pit atmosphere of the list puts them off. Mock-indignation and ritualistic incantation of how we all love users every once in a while, typically after a round of beating up on them, notwithstanding.

The older devs I've spoken to know full well it's a problem, but content themselves with ruminating on the foolishness of youth, instead of leading by and with example.

So it goes on, and the young bloods come in, establish a rep, and move on. Or stick around to ruminate in turn. Because "that's not technical" we can pretend it doesn't matter, until it's time for us to act hurt at someone responding in kind, when suddenly emotional issues are very important, and must be treated with all the respect their fragile egos require. If it's their emotions, that is.


The size of the majority wins over the quality or perceived power of an individual's contributions and/or that individual's programming language skills. Most mailing lists are optional, they are meant for feedback and/or support that is mostly based on bike shedding and has no decisive body. Decisions are done in the individual projects' meetings and/or by their leads; for more controversial matters, decisions are done by Gentoo Council. If you want to improve Gentoo; you'll want to encourage more people to contribute, as Gentoo comes from you, the Gentoo community.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@TomWij: I've asked you not to respond to me before, so I don't know why you feel the need to tell me what ArneBab's point is. As for recruitment, that's exactly why you have such a hard time recruiting. IOW you're simply repeating my point, albeit leaving out the reasons for the problem.
I've been civil, and tried to keep things to other channels, but you refuse to leave me alone, constantly dissecting my posts. That you do so with everyone doesn't make it all right, nor does it mean I am going to start chasing the tail with you again. Please don't respond to me directly again.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Categorization of people is beyond interest, because of its less helpful nature; replies and quotes are indirect compared to how direct a private message is, as posts are meant for users that come along to read and thus it does address a part of the Gentoo community instead of an individual. The presence of one individual in a forum topic shouldn't affect the presence of anyone, as everyone that is interested in this discussion is welcome to discuss it; the same can be perceived on the mailing lists, those that pretend to be the most loud and/or most powerful shouldn't affect the ability for anyone to join that discussion on the mailing list.

In the context of this discussion about recruitment; that shows how the point is different and that there are no reasons for a problem, it suggests that anyone can join and become a Gentoo Developer (or a developer for one of its derivatives; as Gentoo is after all, a meta distribution) regardless of people pretending to be loud or powerful. This post, as well as the previous post in this topic (as defined by the underlined "you"), are written for any reader from the Gentoo Community; because everyone is welcome in Gentoo, which is the message that is carried forward in the previous post. Money isn't necessarily necessary, except for perhaps a few specific cases (eg. infrastructure, or when users want to push something specific forward); but rather you, the Gentoo community, is what makes Gentoo what it is and what can make Gentoo stay as well as improve in the future.

ArneBab wrote:
If just the 10% of the members of the Gentoo Forums who are real fans would join Gentoo e.V. and support Gentoo with 2€ a month, this would allow hiring 4 full-time developers. There are 140.000 users in here!


In similar thoughts; consider that if we convince up to 0.1% of the members on the Gentoo Forums who are real fans to become a Gentoo Developer, we would have up to double the amount of Gentoo Developers than we have now.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ArneBab
What about paying gentoo-forum moderators ?
I mean particularly those forced parsing duplicate / redundant contributions.
And a bonus when they go per pair.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What about spending it to regular forum contributors that don't redundantly repeat themselves across several mediums?
I mean particularly those spending a lot of their time on non-duplicated and non-redundant contributions.
And a bonus when they bring something new to the table.

Yes, these generalizing similar sentences are meant to be positively flattering; as they pursue a similar goal,
as well as further indirectly demonstrate how that would generalize to a contest, in small steps towards a zone.

Money and dissection doesn't make you happy. Motivation and collaboration makes you happy.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The recent discussion here has strayed way off topic and decended into meta-discussion.

This thread is in danger of being moved to OTW, locked or both.
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