On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 12:50 +0200, Florian Effenberger wrote: > Hi Ian, > > Ian wrote on 2010-06-20 09.34: > > >> Mozilla is quite hard to compare with us. I know many of the Mozilla > >> folks, and they are in a much more luxury situation than we are. > > > > The question is why? What is it about Mozilla that is different from > > OOo? > > the difference is that Mozilla > > 1. has a foundation, and
> 2. this foundation has millions of dollars to spend So why has an OOo foundation never been set up? If one had been set up 10 years ago maybe we would have millions of dollars to spend. If started now maybe in 10 years we won't be having the same conversation ;-) But really that is down to the CC as I can't see many individuals having the authority, motivation or resources to do it on their own. > This is somehow different to what we have. Our community budget is > limited, and Oracle is not an OpenOffice.org foundation, but a company. > > The difference is that OpenOffice.org (not Oracle!) has no offices > worldwide, does not employ people. Believe me, the difference is huge, > and things are hardly comparable. I understand the difference, what I don't understand is why in the last 10 years nothing has ever been done about it. (actually I think I do understand it - lack of an enterprise culture and active discouragement from Sun at the time) After all a foundation has been discussed many times in the past. Just nothing ever happens. My own experience is one of having been actively discouraged from entrepreneurial activity which is why I am far less active in the OOo community now than in the past. I'd rather build a business outside the politics and bureaucracy. > At least I don't know about any job offers the OpenOffice.org community > (again, not Oracle, as you compare to Mozilla) has. If I missed that, > and there's a site from an OpenOffice.org foundation offering a job with > a decent team, that would help some marketing folks doing their tasks > all day long with being paid for it, please, let me know, I'd surely be > interested. ;-) I'm sure there isn't which is why I emphasise that Oracle puts money into developing code and some volunteers do it for free. Oracle can choose where it puts its resources in the same way as any individual, just on a bigger scale. Oracle is like one big collective individual in the community in terms of being a community member. We should not expect Oracle to pay volunteers any more than we would expect one volunteer to pay another. > > Question is how to define what is volunteer work and what is not. Oracle > > pay people for doing work of the same type that volunteers do. The real > > issue is that Oracle provides the money so they can choose how to spend > > it. It is certainly more difficult for general money under the control > > of team OOo or the CC to be spent on work time without causing problems > > - in fact there are problems on travel expenses because some people get > > them covered and some don't. > > I'm all for covering (valid) expenses, which is different from paying > for work. One covers expenses, the other pays for work time. Yes but the point is that some people get expenses approved for some things while others will get them turned down. (Rightly so) So in principle some people get expenses and some people don't and that could be for very similar events. Some people commit their own money - personally I have spent thousands of Euro promoting OOo and I know others that have done so too. It isn't a problem for me, I'm just saying that in principle decisions are already made about who gets paid expenses and who does not. It's bound to be the case with a finite budget. > The problem is: When we pay for work time, where to start? Who to pay? I > can name you dozens of people contributing to OpenOffice.org for years, > spending thousands of hours, who are not paid. Why then shall we pay > someone who did a new starting page for one project, and others who > contribute regularly are left behind? See above, I'm not saying it is not a problem or commenting on that particular case, I'm saying in principle it happens already and a better solution is to look at ways of increasing revenue to enable more people to get paid and ways in which funds can be distributed to those doing critically important work that need them. I'd rather focus on getting more resource in and how it can be prioritised than constantly worrying that there is no resource. > If we started to pay people for work time, we need to do it equally, and > for that, we don't have the money. > > > One way to pay volunteers for work would be for a group of volunteers to > > raise money eg through an EU grant or other enterprise and use it to > > target specific parts of the project. That is really no different from > > Oracle paying the engineers or Louis. > > The difference between us and Oracle is, is that Oracle people are > contracted, we are volunteers. Oracle as a company is effectively a volunteer. It puts money into OOo for its own motivation as do individuals. One motivation might be to generate income, another to counter competitors another because it is ethically the right thing to do. If I as an individual volunteer decide to put 5000 Euro into OOo development I have the say in how that resource is spent. If the CC does so on behalf of a section of the community that has given it authority over certain resources it too has discretion as to how that resource is deployed. The CC does not control every bit of resource from volunteers - possibly a tiny minority in practice. So the issue is really one of motivation and decision making power over the resources. The community includes Oracle, the CC, individuals, governments other businesses. If the CC has authority over a set of resources it can decide how to spend those resources. If an individual has money they might give it to the CC to spend on their behalf or they might spend it directly themselves. > Of course, they are paid for similar > things we do, but they are contracted, we aren't. If we now start to > make differences between the volunteers, this will lead to risks. > > Believe me, I really would love to compensate people's efforts and work, > but with a total budget of 100.000 € per year, we cannot pay the work of > dozens of contributors, plus travel, lodging and others. I don't think so either, I just wonder why paying expenses selectively is seen as different from paying for time selectively. > > What I'm saying is that the principle of paying some people and not > > others is already set, the issue is more about the mechanism for payment > > and the priority and methods for raising funds and who controls them > > than it is the principle. > > I think we are not "paying" people at the moment. The CC does pay some people to go to some shows, but not everyone for any show requested (and rightly so). Decisions are made about priorities eg paying say a project lead to attend OOoConf but then turning down say an ordinary volunteer who wants to attend a local event. With finite resources such decisions are always going to be necessary. > What we do now is refunding people's expenses, and we try to be fair and > transparent in that process. Name me one request we erroneously > rejected, and I'll look into it. So we could do the same with other uses of resources. X is a high priority and a very small resource will make a big difference Y can do it but can't afford to do it without some funding. Z would cost the same in travel expenses for P but will have marginal effect. Therefore better to spend the resource on X. > What we do not do is paying people for their work time. Exceptions are > the contests like summer internship and documentation bounty, but to my > opinion, this is okay for the reasons I've stated in my last e-mail. All you are really saying is that the circumstances and methods are what matter, not the principle of payment. > Believe me, I was more than happy if we had some donation of a few > million dollars, could hire people on behalf of the community, but it's > not possible. I'd agree that donations are not likely, but consider whether it might be better to invest 1.000 Euros in generating a further 1.000 Euros or just spending the first 1.000 and hoping someone will donate more. > Therefore, we need to spend our resources and invest our > money wisely, and be fair to everyone. On that we agree entirely :-) I'd put an emphasis on investment to generate more resources than we started with. To be honest, I just raise these issues occasionally to see if anything has changed. I don't think that there has ever been the right enterprise culture in OOo to really capitalise on the potential of the product. For a global project of this size there really should be scope to generate millions of Euros per year. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications A new approach to assessment for learning www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
