On 06/28/2011 07:51 PM Laura Creighton wrote:
In a message of Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:40:29 +0200, "Massa, Harald Armin" writes:
Hi Harald! Note that we are pypy-dev@python.org these days.
has anyone already setup a bounties page for pypy-enabling modules?
No. We just had the idea of doing it very recently.
Or had that idea and trashed it, because bounties won't be motivating any
of the pypy-capable developers?
No, but it took the reception of Europython, where I met many people who
would pay for GIL removal, for instance, before I got the idea that
crowdsourcing would work for us. So we have been discussing this at
this sprint.
I am dreaming of something like:
module: py2exe
person_a pledging x money units for an adaption
person_b pledging y money units for an adaption
person_c pledging z money units for an adaption
collectivly there are (x+y+z) money units pledged; (x+y+z) is over the
boredome-treshhold, and it gets realised.
a pypy-able guy claims the work, the pledges are collected, and after
finishing the money is given to the work-doer.
I think we want to say who wants to do the work, and how soon they
could start before we collect the pledges. For things that are
complicated, like 'kill the GIL' and 'numpy integration' we would
need to do the spelling out of exactly what it is that we would
be willing to do. I'm also open to the idea of crowdsourcing the
idea of adding feature requests.
I'd rather get paid up front, as well, for things that take months and
or years to do.
Quite sure there are existing commercial entitities who do exactly this,
but
is there a subarea for pypy? Or am I just missing the link from the main
page?
After 4 days of looking I have not found a commercial entity that does
this. But I have been talking to fundedbyme, a Swedish based international
competitor for kickstarter. The nice thing is that fundedbyme is a Django
app. I've been talking to one of the founders, and they would like to share
code with us, or set up a way to benefit open source programs in general.
When the PyPy Sprint is over, and I am done a few days of vacation, I
will return to Sweden, and go meet with these people. They are pypy
fans already.
In the meantime, if you find a commercial entity which is doing what
we want already, do let me know. For me it is a matter of balancing
the benefit of being paid by a hundred people in 25 Euro chunks, vs
the hassle of having to return money already pledged via paypal or
some service if the feature doesn't receive enough funding, (if we
collect before the work starts) or going after deadbeat promisers who
never pay (if we collect after the work is done). What was clear to me
was that there was enough public support for PyPy that we could really
live on the cash donations of people wanting to pay what they could
to get feature X. The community based support is there.
So now I just have to find a way to implement it.
Harald
Send ideas this way.
Laura
Hm, my (very) few past posts here have found their way around into my newsgroup
in-basket,
but this one did not. I am guessing it might be because I used "reply-all"
and deleted (Newsgroup:) gmane.comp.python.pypy (newsgroup) in favor of leaving
just (CC:) pypy-dev <pypy-dev@python.org> in the addressee list. I subscribed
via gmane, IIRC,
so perhaps I am filtered out if I send to pypy-dev@python.org?
Perhaps the above observation is useful, if not the body of my post, repeated
below,
with this now posted solely to gmane.comp.python.pypy:
(We'll see what happens ;-)
_______________________________________________________________
A thought (or two):
Since it is hard to define end goals exactly, perhaps it would be useful
to conceive of a development goal as a later stage in a process, where partial
goals
are defined as achieved when a new version of an incrementally expanded test
suite
is passed. Thus passing tests of a certain level can be used as an objective
acceptance criterion
for distributing rewards defined for that stage.
Of course, conceiving and developing tests is also reward-worthy work, and I am
not sure how to
define objective measurable results for their completion prior to the s/w they
test ;-)
The main idea is just to break down the work into units whose satisfactory
completion
can objectively be demonstrated as progress occurs and contributors perhaps
only work
on certain phases or tests they are interested in (or feel they can make easy
money knocking out ;-)
This should also make it easier for an interested party to offer a bounty for a
specialized feature,
by introducing a specialized test, which could be e.g., achieving a given speed
on a special benchmark
on a particular platform, and/or anything of particular interest to him or her.
A public website tying pledges and actual escrowed funds held by the "trustee"
to test suite versions
(identified with hashing version control), would make level(s) of interest(s)
apparent and definitions clear.
I guess some bounty offerers may wish to set licensing criteria as well. Is
there room for that?
Hm, wonder how to write a test program to verify special bounty criteria such
as licensing? (Extract and
verify by hash delimited licensing boilerplate in the sources or the
contributions? Verify existence of
a digitally signed legal document in a designated registry? Etc.?)
I hope the FOSS ethos can overcome the difficulties of sharing rewards
equitably when unequal contributions
are all necessary for passing a testing milestone, but none is alone sufficient
;-) Where determining proportion
of credit and contributions could be contested, perhaps some thought could
preempt unhappy squabbles? Peer voting?
How to avoid the temptations of negative competition (e.g. withholding
information or its use so as to hobble
competitors, to the detriment[1] of the common good) if personal monetary gain depends on
"winning" a contest for credit?
These are just some thoughts in case the reward process scales up and gets
complicated (not intended
as a proposal for how to complicate things ;-)
Regards,
Bengt Richter
[1] BTW, this is IMO the essential flaw in the patent/copyright exclusive-rights
method of rewarding inventors and authors: it rewards by way of an artificial
"right" to create artificial scarcity -- an artificiality particularly obvious
in the digital domain. Better IMO to reward authors and inventors by a
guaranteed minimum share of
eventual profits in the market, rather than creating impediments to the use of
ideas in the market
through privileged powers of denial that trolls can exploit.
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