July 24, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 12:03:27 UTC, Exil wrote:
> On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 10:06:01 UTC, ketmar wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/24/2019 2:33 AM, ketmar wrote:
>>>> that is called "asking a permission". if there is anybody to whom somebody else has to explain how and why his money spent, that is called "asking a permission to spend money".
>>>
>>> The Foundation uses a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) for advice and for handling the accounting. We follow the CPA's advice to ensure we are following the law and doing things by the book.
>>
>> and i am not trying to say that you're doing something wrong, or vile, or something like that. i am only trying to say that is a legal entity cannot even use its own money without Big Brother approval, then there is little sense in being "legal" (whatever that means) at all.
>
> So you are suggesting they commit fraud and become criminals? You don't have laws in your country? Being "legal" means following the law. I haven't heard this "big brother" conspiracy popsicles in a long time.

Exactly!

Unfortunately he is mixing things up and as already said in this topic, the Foundation can pay anyone but it need to be by the book, for example in this case the OP should generate the receipts, or otherwise how the Foundation could pay him? The foundation can't just send money out there because someone asks.

Where I live the non-profit foundations are special because they don't pay taxes, but they need to follow the rules like any other foundation, otherwise they could be used for fraud.

Unfortunately mixing programming with legal stuff is derailing this thread. :)

Sasha.
July 24, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 11:44:56 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
> On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 11:36:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
>
>> So what happened? Why wasn't there a link on the homepage that said "Set & Get Bounties", and why wasn't it brought to the public's attention regularly? It's not rocket science, it's marketing basics.
>
> I imagine because sometimes people are more interested in complaining and telling others what they ought to do than finding constructive ways to move the world in the direction in which they think it should go.
>
> If you see something missing it's not that difficult to fix it yourself.  dlang.org is on github, after all.

Er, yeah, sure, it's the people who never knew it even existed and complain that they weren't told that are to blame, not those who were in the know and didn't advertise it. Ha ha ha! But Exil has basically said all there is to say.[1]

> Human nature is a funny thing.

It is funny, indeed! When I look at your posts on this forum and your professional background it is obvious that you've been trained to give this sort of motivational talk, rambling on about the universe and advancing things. And yet, you always stick with the status quo and the powers that be, in fact you always advocate for standstill, albeit in the guise of spiritual advancement. Funny that. I wonder what you gain by this, I can only guess, but I do know that people who talk about the cosmos and the universe all the time have very worldly interests. I've been around the block a few times and your voodoo psychology won't work on me. And it sounds like a broken record you turn on by reflex, as is clear from your answer above that has backfired (see [1]). Do you ever stop for a second to think about what people who complain are actually saying or do you just copy and paste your voodoo psychology?


[1] https://forum.dlang.org/post/sqxhmoqsklhjrxvhnkdc@forum.dlang.org
July 24, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 13:21:48 UTC, Chris wrote:
> [snip]
>
> It is funny, indeed! When I look at your posts on this forum and your professional background it is obvious that you've been trained to give this sort of motivational talk, rambling on about the universe and advancing things. And yet, you always stick with the status quo and the powers that be, in fact you always advocate for standstill, albeit in the guise of spiritual advancement. Funny that. I wonder what you gain by this, I can only guess, but I do know that people who talk about the cosmos and the universe all the time have very worldly interests. I've been around the block a few times and your voodoo psychology won't work on me. And it sounds like a broken record you turn on by reflex, as is clear from your answer above that has backfired (see [1]). Do you ever stop for a second to think about what people who complain are actually saying or do you just copy and paste your voodoo psychology?
>

Ad hominem.
July 24, 2019
24.07.2019 16:21, Chris пишет:
> It is funny, indeed! When I look at your posts on this forum and your professional background it is obvious that you've been trained to give 

When I look at your posts I see a person who was an active D user and had his opinion what should be done by D community. The community did not do things you had proposed and obviously you were disappointed and now you attack D community members using this forum and reddit. At least a person with nickname like yours. You are not objective in fact.

P.S. english isn't my native language so sorry if I was rude or impolite.
July 24, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 14:44:07 UTC, drug wrote:
> 24.07.2019 16:21, Chris пишет:
>> It is funny, indeed! When I look at your posts on this forum and your professional background it is obvious that you've been trained to give
>
> When I look at your posts I see a person who was an active D user and had his opinion what should be done by D community. The community did not do things you had proposed and obviously you were disappointed and now you attack D community members using this forum and reddit. At least a person with nickname like yours. You are not objective in fact.

I'm not on reddit and never have been. Things concerning D I only post here. So this is a different "Chris". Yes, the D leadership has made a lot of bad decisions in my opinion, basic things that, when done right, could have attracted new users and improved the lives of veteran users, but instead they got entangled in a mixture of abstract CS stuff and pet projects. And on top of that they grew increasingly hostile to criticism, as I said, the whole thing has turned into a political party with special interest groups. All this talk about "community" is just hot air and only serves to shut critics up.

As regards objectivity, maybe I've become more objective since I stepped back a little and had a sober look at the whole D thing. I'd say I wasn't objective when I first picked it up. It's not that I'm angry that I couldn't have it my way, I'm not a child, it's just that things are going nowhere, they don't even get the basics right as has become clear in this thread yet again. I've come to the conclusion that the DLF doesn't really care. They have their own thing going on up there, whatever that is. A lot of decisions wouldn't make sense, if they cared about the common user.

> P.S. english isn't my native language so sorry if I was rude or impolite.

No worries. I'm not so easily offended, especially not in debates.
July 24, 2019
On 7/23/19 5:22 PM, Basile B. wrote:
> This is a bold, very bold post.
> 
> I think there's a problem in the economic system of the D lang foundation.
> And because of this problem I'll stop contributing to the compiler and the standard library.
> 
> Basically what has opened my eyes is this situation: like often I have money problems. Since six months I have fixed something like 50 dmd bugs. So a natural reflex was to contact the D foundation, to ask for a little "bounty".
> 
> The reply from the foundation was something like : "we cant do that because now we are a legal entity and also this would make other contributors jealous".
> Ok so I propose a serious project... I even reserve **three weeks** for it... No replies nothing.
> 
> So you've lost me. If someone in needs cant even get 50 bucks from the foundation, in retribution for 50 bug fixes, there's a serious problem.
> 
> Goodbye.
> 
> Basile B.

We replied to the initial request for an unspecified amount of money
with this:

=====
Hi Basile, thanks for reaching out! And of course thank you very much for your prolific and continuing contributions to the D language.

I spoke to the other Foundation officers and our accountant. Sadly we currently cannot issue payment for past contributions, for the following reasons:

* Accounting-wise we'd need to set up a contract first, and pay for services rendered. It's unusual and suspicious to do so retroactively.
* If we pay a sort of a prize/bonus we'd need to make that public first with terms, conditions, etc. Paying prizes randomly may flag us for IRS because that's the obvious way people pay themselves and friends out of donated money.
* Assuming we get over the accounting hurdles, we need to make sure issuing payment to you is also fair to other contributors.

Thanks again for letting us know that payment would be motivating. This may be a good idea for Mike to create a bounty/prize system that we can offer to our contributors.
====

Subsequent to that request you sent a proposal to work on https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19124, again for an unspecified amount of money. After consulting with the other Foundation officers, I wrote this:

====
Thanks for your suggestion, we'll keep it in mind. Setting up a contract for a bug fix/enhancement is high overhead, but we are considering a bug bounty option open for all.
====

We wanted to avoid creating the precedent that contributors ask for
money for working on issues of their choosing. The fact that the amount
requested was unspecified is important, too - accounting for $50 vs.
$500 vs $5000 goes differently.

Three hours later I got an email from you entitled "What's wrong with you andrei?" with the following content:

====
Honestly what's wrong with you since a year or two ? You're not the same guy anymore, you're not far to be hated by everyone in the D world.
Atila is supposed to replace you, I've read, but he's as you in the latestest months, i.e absent.

What is the fucking damn problem ?
====

Indeed I chose to not reply to that.
July 25, 2019
Please keep politics out of this forum.
July 25, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 09:09:23 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> On 24/07/2019 8:58 PM, IGotD- wrote:
>> I would go another direction. If the foundation has the money, why not hire a person or two to do development and fixes. Priority could be based on top contributes wishes. Just having a few people is more manageable when it comes to byrocracy.
>
> That is very expensive and as I understand it is out of scope of DLF.
>
>> Hiring students is more difficult but cheaper as usually it must be on a project where they can obtain university credits.
>
> It is also a Trojan Horse in introducing D into the University.
> It is a brilliant long term strategy.

We are trying here at University Politehnica of Bucharest to introduce D to a programming course; we have also held a D summer school with support from the university and now we are trying to create bachelor/dissertation projects for students on D related topics. We hope that this will raise awareness but of course, these sort of things take time.
July 25, 2019
On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 13:21:48 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 11:44:56 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 11:36:40 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>
>> Human nature is a funny thing.
>
> It is funny, indeed! When I look at your posts on this forum and your professional background it is obvious that you've been trained to give this sort of motivational talk, rambling on about the universe and advancing things. And yet, you always stick with the status quo and the powers that be, in fact you always advocate for standstill, albeit in the guise of spiritual advancement.

He does come across a bit mystical but what he says neither advocating the status quo nor is it anything particularly profound. Its plain common sense. If you want something to happen, start yourself and try to pull people with you. Its one of the oldest adages... "Lead by example". Whining and criticising other people because they arn't doing what you think they should be doing only works when you're actually paying them. And even then its not a great way to motivate people because if all you do is moan and criticise people stop listing. Doesn't matter if what you say is right or wrong, the delivery method kills any chance you have of being heard.


July 25, 2019
On Thursday, 25 July 2019 at 00:21:49 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
> We replied to the initial request for an unspecified amount of money
> with this:
>
> =====
> Hi Basile, thanks for reaching out! And of course thank you very much for your prolific and continuing contributions to the D language.
>
> I spoke to the other Foundation officers and our accountant. Sadly we currently cannot issue payment for past contributions, for the following reasons:
>
> * Accounting-wise we'd need to set up a contract first, and pay for services rendered. It's unusual and suspicious to do so retroactively.
> * If we pay a sort of a prize/bonus we'd need to make that public first with terms, conditions, etc. Paying prizes randomly may flag us for IRS because that's the obvious way people pay themselves and friends out of donated money.
> * Assuming we get over the accounting hurdles, we need to make sure issuing payment to you is also fair to other contributors.
>
> Thanks again for letting us know that payment would be motivating. This may be a good idea for Mike to create a bounty/prize system that we can offer to our contributors.
> ====

When did this correspondence take place? Here's what Mike wrote earlier:

"I talked with a company a few weeks back that wants to offer bounties for several Bugzilla issues. I'm currently awaiting news that they have approval for it and know what their budget is. When I get the word I'll be setting up a bounty system on Flipcause. The company will seed it, applying money to the issues they care about. Anyone will be able to donate to those issues or request to set up a bounty on other issues. The Foundation will then be able to pay out bounties to anyone who fixes those issues."

So whose idea was the bounty system? Was it triggered by the company that approached Mike or was it triggered by Basiles email as your reply suggests? Did Basile approach you before the "few weeks back" that Mike mentions in his post above? It's mind-boggling.

> Subsequent to that request you sent a proposal to work on https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19124, again for an unspecified amount of money. After consulting with the other Foundation officers, I wrote this:
>
> ====
> Thanks for your suggestion, we'll keep it in mind. Setting up a contract for a bug fix/enhancement is high overhead, but we are considering a bug bounty option open for all.
> ====

Same questions as above and also consider this (Mike again):

"Unfortunately, I can't estimate when the bounty system will be ready because it depends on the company. However, if anyone is willing to apply a bounty to an issue right now, then they can let me know and I can launch it sooner. I just need a specific Bugzilla issue and a dollar amount to get it started."

The system is apparently in place but not (yet) public. Since when exactly has it been in place?

> We wanted to avoid creating the precedent that contributors ask for
> money for working on issues of their choosing.

But this is basically how a bounty system works. Wouldn't this ensure that at least the bugs people choose get fixed? How would you handle this instead? A: See who's first to finish? If various people are working on the same issue at the same time, independently of each other, you're wasting resources. B: Assign issues to people? Won't work.

I'd say apart from having a bounty system, you might consider setting up a DLF specific system where you offer issues with a price tag (based on the degree of difficulty and / or priority). An easy and transparent system. You just have to avoid duplicates in the Flipcause and DLF system.

> The fact that the amount
> requested was unspecified is important, too - accounting for $50 vs.
> $500 vs $5000 goes differently.

D'accord, you need some sort of security there.

> Three hours later I got an email from you entitled "What's wrong with you andrei?" with the following content:
>
> ====
> Honestly what's wrong with you since a year or two ? You're not the same guy anymore, you're not far to be hated by everyone in the D world.
> Atila is supposed to replace you, I've read, but he's as you in the latestest months, i.e absent.
>
> What is the fucking damn problem ?
> ====
>
> Indeed I chose to not reply to that.

No comment.