On Sunday 02 September 2007 12:08, Dossy Shiobara wrote: > On 2007.09.01, Tom Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Why don't we have an idea-raiser? Maybe it is a common disease among > > programmers: writing code is apparently the only thing which counts. > > Ideas are easy to come by; doing--or, getting people to do--is the hard > part. One easy way to get people to do stuff is to pay them. There's > no point in throwing ideas around if there's nobody--or, no funds to pay > somebody--to do anything. >
What are you talking about? Shouldn't you actually need something to do first? Why collect funds, hire someone and then come up with the ideas? Is it at all important to you that the community agree with the reasons for paying someone, and agree on the expected results? > If you have suggestions on ways to get people to do stuff for free, I'd > love to hear them. Better yet: I'd like you to DO whatever it is you > think will make it happen. How about allowing them to be part of the process? Dossy, you keep skipping past the necessary step of getting the community to be interested in your ideas before demanding action. Even if you were the one to do the work, this cannot be the sufficient condition for making changes. Do you just not agree with this, or just not get it? Either way, it is important to understand why you keep suggesting work before agreement, or even discussion. As a specific instance, I have suggested that before a wasting time, or doing documentation that we figure out what kind we want, what is important, what must be done, and what can wait. If we come up with some kind of plan, maybe examples of how to do it, and when, then at least we have some idea of what we want and why. And do this before we start hacking away any further on code which hasn't even been put into production, and has no documented behavior, limitations, etc. Anyone should be able to offer ideas or suggestions without first having to put up a bond somewhere, or be willing and able to do contribute any more. Or knowing how to persuade someone else to work for free, because this is not the question. Probably what we should require is that, other than fixing bugs, contributions of code changes to the core need to go through a process. Why? Yes why? For the exact reason you stated: how do you get people to do stuff for free? If you add something, or change something which requires other users to adapt, who pays for that? You are not asking them to work for free, your forcing them to work for free, or find someone and pay them to make the changes. As far as the AOLserver project is concerned, there are no lead engineers. Why are we talking about what lead engineers do or don't do? Or maybe I missed something? Are there members here that have more rights than others? Some of us can write code and not concern ourselves with documentation? Who are these people? I remember watching a video with the guys who started subversion. At one point they hired a person to be in charge of everything. The guy had to follow the same process as every other developer, paid or volunteer, I think he was on probation at the start. This project and this community is bigger than any one person or sponsor. Why is that important? Because the process was more important than the status of the developers. Exempt some members from the process and you show disrespect for the process, everyone else who follows it and the product. The main reason is that the end doesn't justify the means because the end result is only theoretical, it isn't guaranteed. The process of getting there isn't theoretical, and neither is the current state of the code. In fact, this is exactly what Dossy just said: > Ideas are easy to come by; doing--or, getting people to do--is the hard > part. Unfortunately, with writing code, even paying someone to do it doesn't guarantee results. Yes, doing is very hard, extremely hard, so maybe we better plan really well. tom jackson -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
