On 2020-05-04 23:03:15 +0000, Mike Parker said:

> On Monday, 4 May 2020 at 16:33:10 UTC, Robert M. Münch wrote:
>> On 2020-05-04 09:52:29 +0000, Mike Parker said:
> 
>> 
>> Digging further into this bounty-system I find the process upside down.
>> 
>> While creating a bounty I need to provide my payment information, so I expect that I'm immediately charged for the bounty. But I don't know if anyone will do the bounty at all.
>> 
>> To attract someone I have to guess an amount. Maybe I offer to less, and someone would say "for +$100 I would do it" but I'll never know. The money then is gone on my side and blocked at the foundation because it's "task bounded". So cash gone, effect zero. Tha'ts not a good setup.
> 
> BountySource works the same way

Which is not a good argument... IMO then there process is broken too. Just took a look at the site:

* many old bounties => system doesn't seem to work very good

* no information about AVG time from posting a bounting until done => IMO a very critical KPI

* no information about AVG bounty size in relation to time until done => Again, cirtical KPI

>  -- you put the money upfront and wait for someone to do the job.

Which is playing lottery and not really a way to move things forward.

> Prior to the establishment of our bounty system, the best you could do was leave a note on the donation form and hope the Foundation agreed and could find someone to do the task. Now, we have a way to:
> 
> a) ensure the donation is earmarked for a specific task
> b) make it public so everyone can see how that money is being earmarked
> c) allow anyone else interested in the same task to increase the bounty automatically through the donation form to sweeten the pot
> d) allow anyone interested in working on D tasks to find ways to make a few bucks

I got that. But I think such a system should have the focus on "getting things done". My goal would be to shorten the time from publishing to done and clearly try to understand what it takes.

If the experience shows: Bounties < $5000 have mostly no chance to be done than that helps a lot. How frustrating is it, to sponsor some $ and see the thing sitting around for years? That just doesn't make any sense.

> No, the bounty may not get claimed for a long while, but the money will not be used for anything else in the meantime.

But opportunity costs are running...

> The system isn't set up to facilitate linking financiers with workers.

Maybe to do that would be a very good idea.

I even don't have a clue how many from the community would be willing to work on a contract/bounty/you-name-it. But if these people are not in the community where else should I search?

> Its focus is on establishing a means to direct how the D Language Foundation directs some of the funds it receives when you want your donation go to a specific task rather than to, e.g., funding a scholarship or paying for work you aren't interested in.

Again, I don't have a clue what would be done, or what to expect when doing such a sponsoring. To me this looks like: "Hey, throw some money of the fence and wait for your lootbox." - Not very motivating.

Since I run my own business, I might have a very different view on these things but to sum it up (so far, and don't take me wrong here) the D sponsoring is not a strategic part of the D story.

The community and technology is great, a lot of highly skilled people are here. We don't have to convince us how good and effective using D is. However, I think most would be happy if some things could be pushed forward much quicker.

At the end of the day, IMO, this comes down to having some financial ressources availble/in the market to move things forward, talk about successes, attract others, who see there is an infrastructure to get things done, etc.

To get this started doesn't require a multi-million USD sponsoring from a tech-giant. It requires a more "business related view" on D and it's environment.

Again, please don't get me wrong. A lot of people are very engaged and contribute a lot, I absolutly honor this. It just feels we are sitting in a 600HP car and drive around at the speed of pedestrians...

-- 
Robert M. Münch
http://www.saphirion.com
smarter | better | faster

On Tue, May 05, 2020 at 11:33:31AM +0200, Robert M. Münch via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2020-05-04 23:03:15 +0000, Mike Parker said:
[...]
> > BountySource works the same way
> 
> Which is not a good argument... IMO then there process is broken too. Just took a look at the site:
> 
> * many old bounties => system doesn't seem to work very good
> 
> * no information about AVG time from posting a bounting until done => IMO a very critical KPI
> 
> * no information about AVG bounty size in relation to time until done => Again, cirtical KPI
> 
> >  -- you put the money upfront and wait for someone to do the job.
> 
> Which is playing lottery and not really a way to move things forward.

I don't disagree, but you also have to be realistic that this is a volunteer-based open source project where, unless you're willing to donate enough to hire somebody to work on something full-time, you can't really tell people what to do. (Well, you can, but there's no guarantee they'll listen to you. :-P)  This is both the blessing of an open source project -- you can sometimes get talent that produces high-quality work for free -- and also the curse: sometimes there's something that ought to be done but nobody's interested to do it.

The reason things are structured this way is because it's not geared towards an employer/employee (or employer/contractor) sort of scenario where you offer X$, and somebody signs on to fulfill that work.  It's more a volunteer/volunteer scenario, where the money you offer is more like an incentive for somebody to step up to do the job for the reward if they feel interested and the reward is commensurate with the effort they think they'll need to invest (note: perception here is very important, it may not correspond with the actual effort/cost). It's a buyer's market, not a seller's market, unfortunately.

IMO if we really want to get things moving, esp. on important but "technically boring" issues that nobody shows an interest to work on, what we need is to actually raise the money to *hire* somebody to do the work so that they are obligated under contract to do it.  As long as we're dealing with volunteers, nothing can be guaranteed -- there may be nobody interested to do the job, or people can lose interest midway, or they just don't have the patience/persistence to push things through to the finish.  The only way to get *guaranteed* work is to hire somebody with an actual contract that obligates both parties.


[...]
> I even don't have a clue how many from the community would be willing to work on a contract/bounty/you-name-it. But if these people are not in the community where else should I search?

If it's really that important to you, maybe you should be posting an ad in the job market.  The problem with volunteers is that they can choose not to take the job, then there's really nothing that can be done about it.  Hire someone with a legally-binding contract, then you can secure some guarantees.

And I don't mean any of this in a dismissive way, it's just the reality of the situation.  It's just the nature of volunteer-driven work: the interesting things tend to get done, but the boring (though no less important) work tends to fall by the wayside.  This is why most open-source projects have great code but poor documentation: because coding is more interesting and attracts more volunteers, but documentation is boring and nobody wants to do it.  Unless you can generate a high level of interest in something, chances are it will be sitting there for a long time.  I don't see any other way around this except to hire someone legally bound to fulfill their end of the contract.  Once you have a legally-binding contract then you can obligate them to do the work, even if it's completely boring and uninteresting. Otherwise all bets are off.


T

-- 
They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work. -- Russian saying

On 2020-05-05 14:36:06 +0000, H. S. Teoh said:

> I don't disagree, but you also have to be realistic that this is a
> volunteer-based open source project where, unless you're willing to
> donate enough to hire somebody to work on something full-time, you can't
> really tell people what to do...

I don't disagree, and I fully understand all the mechanics of OOS projects, run one myself a very long time ago...

> It's a buyer's market, not a seller's market, unfortunately.

I agree and IMO not unfortunately... My point is "how to attract" or "which setup" would be better suited for such a situation. Is a bounty system the best way to get things (whatever it is) done in such an environment?

If not, why to have one? The impression I get from a non-working bounty system (meaning, bounties are not offered, hence not taken) is reducing the perception of the cool work all the people are committing here.

And my impression is, the bounty system is suffering from the "seller" side, not the "buyer" side. But again, might only be my impression.

I offered $750 for the std.uni bounty. I can imagine it falls into the "boring" category. Not sure if anyone is ever interested. But I don't have any clue if I could get it started at all.

I might not have the skills, capacity, etc. to do it but I could sponsor stuff. May be we do a short poll, not knowing if anyone is following this thread: What would be the amount of $ where you would do the std.uni bounty?

1. $750
2. $1000
3. $2000
4. $5000
5. $10000

Anyone? Of course I'm assuming that getting payed for doing something is a motivation...

-- 
Robert M. Münch
http://www.saphirion.com
smarter | better | faster