> Martijn, > >> I could organise it but I would need someone to oversee the project >> from a technical perspective and help me set up a technical project >> description for the funding organisation, NLNet. > > I have followed your efforts to get funding from them and it's great > that there is money available. However, as these things go, they > have certain demands in return for their money, they want us to > write down stuff we want to achieve, then write down how we achieved > it, and follow some or other methodology. They want milestones, they > want project plans, deadlines and so on. I really commend your work > and I hope you don't take this personally but all this project plan > and milestone and deadline business is not how *I* want to work on > OSM. A big part of the fun, for me, is that I can choose what to > work on without having to submit a plan beforehand, and I don't have > to make promises to anybody, or actually write down how I intend to > achieve the goals and so on (or IF I write something down then > because I think it's necessary for others, and not for some guy who > tracks where the money has been spent).
Frederik, I see your point very clearly and I've heard it mentioned many a time before. I've been trying - and will continue trying - to get them to loosen up a little. What I would really like is to have 'carte blanche' to organise such a 'hack-a-thon' weekend / week to get as far as possible implementing history / rollback in the backend and api. I am going to propose exactly this to them and see what comes back. They fund a lot of open source development, so they should be sensitive to the way things go in OSM. I was @ the London Hack Day last weekend to get to know some of the developers and get more of a feeling of how they actually work. I went home with the feeling - and SteveC confirmed this - that we're taking too much of a top-down approach to this. > > > I'd rather pay for a flight and hotel myself, in cash, than accept > funding from NLNet and with that (quote) "NLNet will require close > monitoring, a transparent process, definition of milestones and > progress reports throughout the year." > > That's just my personal feeling and I'm sure others will view this > differently, of course it is understandable on their part that they > want to know where the money goes, and again, please don't feel > offended but I don't want their money if this turns OSM into just > another work assignement for me. I share your concern and hesitation. I wouldn't like OSM to turn into a project management job for me. That is what it would turn out to be when I need to monitor milestones, deadlines, deliverables and such. I guess I wouldn't be able to find anyone that I could defer this responsibility to either ;). Here's what I will do. I will propose the hack-a-thon idea to NLNet and stress that we will definitely set realistic targets/goals for the event, but it will, by it's very nature, be a 'best effort' attempt. Let's wait and see what comes back. Would you be interested to help me set it up when the preconditions are right? Take care, Martijn -- martijn van exel -+- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -+- http://www.schaaltreinen.nl/ _______________________________________________ dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dev
