[IAEP] Working with a commercial entity.

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Cristoph and others,

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:04:08AM +0200, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:
>Am 17.05.2010 23:50, schrieb Jonas Smedegaard:
>> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 12:43:19PM -0500, David Farning wrote:
>>> One consideration is that these deployment specific issues are often 
>>> boring -- stuff like bug fixes.  As such we are paying the 
>>> developers the going rate rate for developers in their country or 
>>> region.  This brings three advantages:
>>> 1. The deployment issues are fixed.
>>> 2. These fixes are pushed upstream for inclusion into Sugar.
>>> 3.  There is a growing pool of skilled developers, with knowledge of 
>>> how to work with the Sugar community, co-located with deployment
>>
>> Another (quite related) consideration is the risk of discouraging 
>> similar volunteer efforts.  This brings (at least) two disadvantages:
>>  1. Increasing the gap between developers and users.
>>  2. Encumbering the project with (more) discrete communiction.
>
>Luke raised similar concerns during the "Sugar Labs Budget" discussion 
>last April and I still stick to my reply from back then 
>(http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005028.html):
>
>Quote from
>http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html:
>
>"Done critically, creatively, and transparently, voluntary free 
>software projects can use money and paid labor to a tremendous benefit 
>that only magnifies their accomplishments."
>
>I personally think this is something that Sugar Labs should be aiming 
>for.
>
>Also I think it's important to realize there's a difference between 
>paying development and paying developers. As a Sugar user I don't 
>particularly care about who commits the code or writes the 
>documentation as long as the job of fixing bugs and improving and 
>advancing the platform gets done.

I am not Sugar developer, nor am I a user. Just a volunteer distributor.

I fully agree with Mako's statement quoted above.

A key part as I see it is that of transparency.  Making deals with 
commercial partners have a tendency to spawn discrete communication and 
work shared openly but as a result, not a peer process (a famous example 
is that of Google Android release process of linux kernel patches).


  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20100518/3a42bea4/attachment.pgp