this is an excellent idea and i don't think it needs to be focused only on large corporations or only on corporate individuals who want to volunteer. i would suggest opening the idea to any developer with a skill set that's needed or who wants to learn. and make it available in any Foundation office or chapter office in the world. depending on the skill set or learning situation might determine if the person was paid for their time or volunteered it.
personally i really liked your comparison, when we were chatting the other day, to an artist in residence -- imo, programmers are the artists of our time and this matches well. offering housing and a stipend for food would be a good thing to include when the person volunteers their time. o dan On Aug 9, 2014, at 15:44 , Gilles Dubuc <[email protected]> wrote: > It doesn't exclude the community, the community already contributes to the > software. That's the point of open source. In fact I would expect that > people who already contribute to mediawiki as hobby who are also software > engineers as a day job would enjoy being given the freedom to work on what > they're passionate about even more. The community as you describe it and > people who work for corporations in order to pay their bills has a big > overlap. > > It would also be an opportunity to get valuable contributions from > experienced people whose life constraints may not allow them to do this as > a hobby. There's also a big difference in the nature of what you can > contribute in your free time compared to a full-time basis. > > > On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 3:23 PM, svetlana <[email protected]> wrote: > >> utter and complete rubbish as it excludes the community and leaves all >> development within corporate hands; All against free software philosophy >> and/or community involvement >> >> programming should be a hobby, like editing articles >> >> svetlana >> >> On Sat, 9 Aug 2014, at 23:27, Gilles Dubuc wrote: >>> This is an idea I've had for a while, and I'd like to see if there's any >>> interest, or on the contrary concerns, about it. I would like to explore >>> (and if I have official blessing, champion) the idea of asking >> corporations >>> with software engineering staff if they would be willing to let their >>> employees volunteer their expertise and time to mediawiki while ideally >>> still being on their employer's payroll. I mean engineering in the wide >>> sense of the term, including Ops, QA, etc. and maybe even UX. >>> >>> This would allow engineers to take a break for a predetermined duration >>> from their usual work duties and contribute in a very productive manner >> to >>> our open source projects. And maybe to other open source projects than >>> mediawiki, but I think our project in particular is a great starting >> point. >>> I see this as a flexible scheme. It doesn't really matter if people can >> do >>> it for a day, a month, or a year, I believe that these inter-organization >>> exchanges could have great value. >>> >>> *Background* >>> >>> Earlier this year the WMF's Multimedia team, which I'm a part of, had a >>> volunteer working full-time with us, Aaron Arcos. Aaron used to work at >>> Google and left to spend a year offering his software engineering skills >> to >>> several non-profits. His work with us, bringing his experience from large >>> projects at Google, was invaluable. He mentioned that when he told his >>> former Google co-workers about his idea, some were interested and tempted >>> to follow his example. >>> >>> As some of you may now, Facebook is currently lending the WMF engineering >>> resources in order to help with our HHVM deployment to production. >>> >>> From my subjective perspective, as someone who's paid to be a software >>> engineer, I would definitely enjoy the ability to do something like that >> at >>> certain points of my career. There's always a lot to learn by being >> thrown >>> into the deep end of another organization's software development. >>> >>> In fact, in the corporate world, Twitter and Etsy have identified these >>> benefits and are doing this between themselves: >>> >> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/11/twitter-etsy-run-engineer-exchange-learn/ >>> >>> In our own wiki world, we have Wikipedians in residence: >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_residence >>> >>> *The idea* >>> >>> This is my take on it, and I'm really interested to hear some feedback >> and >>> brainstorm on this. I think that starting talking to interested parties >>> will be what gives shape and structure to the idea. >>> >>> First and foremost I would see this outreach aimed at the engineers >>> themselves. Because worst case scenario, if their employer isn't willing >> to >>> donate continued payroll for that person while they're in residence, we >>> should facilitate people like Aaron Arcos who are willing to donate their >>> time and skills entirely for free. There may be engineers out there at >> the >>> Googles and Facebooks of the world who don't know or might forget that >> they >>> could help projects like mediawiki greatly if they took a break from >> their >>> job and worked on open source for a while. >>> >>> Secondly, I think that such a scheme would be easily pitched to companies >>> (including other non-profits) as a training opportunity. As much as >>> experienced engineers coming into the project have a lot to teach us, we >>> also have a lot of interesting knowledge to teach in return, and the >>> experience of working on this codebase alone, the scale of the traffic >>> we're dealing with, etc., can have incredible training value. >>> >>> I imagine this scheme as being entirely flexible. For a short period or a >>> long period, still paid by their former employer or not, we should foster >>> experienced engineers participating in our project for a period of time. >> We >>> already participate in outreach to people with less experienced >> developers >>> through GSoC and similar (maybe we're not doing enough of that for some >>> people, but that's another topic!), and I think there is an unexplored >>> opportunity in trying to do this with experienced folks. >>> >>> Lastly, while everything I describe here is probably possible on an >>> individual basis and does happen occasionally, I believe that having a >>> catchy name (eg. "engineers in residence"), and an official scheme for it >>> would greatly increase the frequency of it happening. >>> >>> I could keep going on and on about this, but let's see what others think >>> based on this rough idea. And if you're at Wikimania right now and are >>> interested in discussing this topic, find me. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikitech-l mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
