On 5/4/14, 5:38 PM, Caligo via Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:Mostly good points, but the bountysource program is an experiment by Facebook, not by myself. And (without me trying to speak on Facebook's behalf) it would be difficult to argue that Facebook doesn't understand FOSS or is out there to insult contributors. We're just experimenting with various angles. If the bounty system was such a great idea, then every FOSS project would be using it.
As I said: experiment.
Now, hiring full-time engineers to work on a FOSS project, that's an entirely different issue. Besides, if someone is trying to figure out how FOSS teams manage to become successful in regards to development and all the associated technical and social complexities, then all they have to do is study one of the million different FOSS projects out there. Many well known FOSS contributors have actually documented their experience and knowledge of managing FOSS projects.
Great, a few representative links would be most welcome.
Here is an idea: include new features in DMD/Phobos as soon as they arrive, and make them part of the official binary release so that the average D user can try them out. Make sure they are marked as unstable, and put a on/off switch on them (something like what Rust/Haskell have; not a compiler switch). If the feature receives no implementation bug reports for X consecutive days AND no design bug reports for Y consecutive days, then the feature is marked stable and officially becomes part of DMD/Phobos. The X and the Y can be decreased as D's number of users increases over the years. The whole idea is very much like farming: you are planting seeds. As the plants grow, some of them will not survive, others will be destroyed, and some of them will take years to grow. In any case, you harvest the fruits when they are ready. Here are good starting values for X and Y: X = 90 days Y = 180 days
This is nice, but on the face of it it's just this: an idea on how other people should do things on their free time. I'd have difficulty convincing people they should work that way. The kind of ideas that I noticed are successful are those that actually carry the work through and serve as good examples to follow.
Andrei
