How To Sponsor an Open Source Sprint 58
Esther Schindler writes "Does your favorite open source project need just a little extra functionality? As Esther Schindler explains in this IT World article, your company can encourage the developers to add the features you've been yearning for — for far, far less money than you imagine. She interviews companies who have sponsored 'code-a-thons' for Drupal, Plone, simwiddy, and a set of applications for British Telecom, and provides specific pointers. From the article: 'To ensure that the event happens and that it meets its goals, you must connect with the right members of the community and motivate them to work with you. "It's not like these people are paid to work for your interests," points out Brightcove's Whatcott. If your business already has project committers on its staff, then it's just a matter of leveraging existing relationships. But, says Stahl, "Someone less 'core' in the community might well have a harder time.'"'
um (Score:5, Interesting)
But developers have no reason to just work for someone for free.
This should never happen in a board meeting: "We need feature X but we can't afford it so let's get someone to do it for free". Open source developers will develop your platform to develop the features they want. It happens naturally; you can't just buy everyone pizza and sit them down and tell them to get to work.
Re:um (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole article seems wrongheaded in exactly the way you point out.
Let's see how many people can figure out the target audience of this article... So lets see..
1. We are targeting an audience that doesn't know what a Code Jam is:
A sprint (sometimes called a Code Jam or hack-a-thon) is a short time period (three to five days) during which software developers work on a particular chunk of functionality.
2. This audience doesn't know why an IT manager might want a code jam, but hey, it might be cheap! :
For many IT managers, the most compelling reason for the company to sponsor a sprint is financial, because you just might be able to cover the costs out of petty cash.
3. The target audience is likely to relate to a comparison of the cost of this 'Code Jam' to monthly marketing costs, specifically, client :
dinners
In short: In an open source sprint, you can add new functionality to your most important application for less money than your marketing department spent last month on a single fancy client dinner.
Any guesses on who this author wants to start trying to exploit the OSS dev webs?
Re:um (Score:4, Informative)
4. The target audience uses phrases like "leverage existing relationships".
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Will code for Pizza (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen the job situation? Nearly 10% Unemployment!
The glamor days of the DOTCOM era are long ago gone. I know a few code monkeys who'd code for free if it meant getting a chance at a real paying job, and to get a pizza for dinner.
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One of my favorite tactics use to be buying grad-students pizza. There's this great prof at Berkeley who spearheaded a whole bunch of EDA innovations. He has a difficult to spell Italian name. Anyway, he had a reputation of making industry pay for his insights (and his student's). I'd just show up, offer free pizza and beer to his students, and have a great time while learning the latest Berkeley innovations.
Anyway, it's time to give back rather than take, for me. I've got this big dumb idea (I have lo
Share a What? (Score:3, Funny)
From the front page of the ShareALot.org website:
Home Services
Offered by HorseyGirl - Pet Sitting - 10 stars/hr
If you live near Parker Rd, I'd be happy to take care of your animal while your on vacation. For 10 stars a day, I'll feed your animal twice, play with it, and if it's sick I'll call you. Call my parents at 919-969-8609, and ask if Caitlin can take care of your pet.
HorseyGirl wants to take care of my pet? Ummmm... is that a legit post or are you just seeing an influx of people who got kicked off of Craigslist for offering erotic services?
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Call her parents and ask. The aftermath could be... interesting.
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Don't! She's an FBI agent, I know because^%T^%&
no carrier
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The offerings are lousy and the requests are kind of demanding.* Seriously, you're gonna have to get your friends or the local linux group or whatever to actually do some stuff, get that reflected in the website, and build out from there. (Basically, get known in the community first, become sustainable, and let the web reflect that. If it means you're going door to door asking people if they want to volunteer for stuff/need stuff-well I guess that's what it takes. High school kids and younger are really goo
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Thanks for the good advice, which I intend to take. I'm gonna have my wife (a professional writer) go over the site carefully, and then I'll start trying to get people in Carrboro involved.
I'll also reword my daughter's pet-sitting add.
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I currently work for a dotcom and love it. You can still find a good dotcom to work for if you have the talent.
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Would you please! think further, than to the next day?
If you code for free, this is just showing that there is no reason, to give anyone a real paying job. It teaches managers that enslaving people is "just awww-right"(TM).
Even worse, it forces the rest of us, to accept those conditions too, if we want to compete with you.
People like you and those code monkeys are the very reason we have to work shitty jobs for next to no money. You see, if they would pay us more, it would cost them nothing in the long run.
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So TYVM, asshole, for proving that "there is always an idiot who will do it for less, even though he can't sustain life with it, because he does not think an second into the future".
The problem is, that's true (is, has been, probably will remain true).
Neither solidarity nor foresight are widely distributed attributes, egoism is. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
Human nature will easily put the 'now' above the 'tomorrow' as well as the 'me' above 'family' above 'town' above 'country', simply because it's more immediate.
The same principle applies to things like environmental protection, food quality (cheap trash vs. higher quality but more expensive) as well.
Concerning wag
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A high quality professional, is a high quality professional no matter what the economy is like.
Though there are professionals at creating money from thin air, those are definitely going to "suffer".
I personally work for a company that was hit, but the management will make sure I stay with the company, just because of the value I bring and can deliver.
Re:um (Score:5, Funny)
It happens naturally; you can't just buy everyone pizza and sit them down and tell them to get to work.
I totally agree. We have our pride, dammit!
But, um, just between you and me... what sort of toppings are we talking about?
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In college, I use to fix video games for pizza and beer... it ways GREAT!
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Yeah. Especially for all the other developers you forced into poverty, to compete. You worked below sustainability, and destroyed the whole (local) market with it. Thank you very much, sucker!
Re:um (Score:4, Insightful)
"We need feature X but we can't afford it so let's get someone to do it for free".
Nice strawman there.
Chances are a company is already using or is about to use an open source application, but just needs a few tweaks to make it fit well. The request is unlikely to come from the board room - it's probably by the IT or operational staff. A manager somewhere will need to sign off the operational or capital expense for the request - just as they would with commercial closed source software - and all the board will see is the P&L sheet.
Open source developers will develop your platform to develop the features they want. It happens naturally
That's a gross simplification. Developers are (usually) humans too, and often enjoy pleasing others and seeing their software adopted. The direction could be set via an online community forum, or specific users requests.
As for the actual request - depending upon the nature of the software and the developers, a "buy everyone pizza" code-a-thon might work. Alternatively the customer might put together a requirements spec, submit it to the developer and receive a formal quotation. The fact that they have to write the check to a .org versus .com makes little difference.
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Re:um (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of pizza, I would suggest cash.
Some years ago, I was working for an ISP that was looking to replace its webmail interface, which was not only aging, creaking, and proprietary, but had a one-off hack grafted onto it by someone who no longer worked there in order to make it work in Japanese. That hack prevent upgrading, and since the person who'd written had left under, well, less than ideal circumstances, there would have been zero interest on either side in getting him to update it. It was so badly written that no one could even figure it out.
So, the decision was made to replace it and I was tasked with finding the replacement. Working perfectly in English and Japanese, and having (at least) an E-J bilingual UI out of the box was a core requirement. After looking at a lot of things, IlohaMail (http://ilohamail.org/) seemed like the best choice, except for one problem: at that time, it only supported IMAP, and POP3 access was also a core requirement for us.
So, I went to the engineering manager with the recommendation that we choose IlohaMail and pay the developer to add POP3 support and GPL it as part of the main IlohaMail package. I got a greenlight for that, and that's how POP3 support came to be in IlohaMail. I don't recall the exact dates of this, but I left that job in the Fall of 2002 and IlohaMail had already been up and running for some time before I left.
The point of this narrative is that if a company likes some Free software project but it lacks one or more features they need or want very badly, going to the author(s) and paying them to implement those features in the mainline of the project can be very effective. Not many things are better in work than to get paid for working on a project you like so much you do it for free anyway, especially when you are getting paid to work on it in complete freedom. It's sort of like being a professional fisherman or poker player, minus the grueling life on the tournament circuit. OK, the BASS tour is probably more grueling than the the poker circuit, but both are life on the road.
So rather than a sprint, done by people who may have no prior involvement in a project, funding development of features you want may be the most effective way to go. Will it cost more than a sprint? Probably. Will it yield better results? Certainly. You're not only getting the work done by those most familiar with the project, you're getting done exactly what you want done.
In case of objections along the lines of "But if we fund Free development, our competitors will be able to use the same features we do!" the counterarguments are:
-Yes, in theory, but we will still have the jump on them because we are funding these features and will be prepared to use them as soon as they are available because we know they are coming. This is true even for competitors who are already using it;
-That assumes that our competitors not only know about this project, but will want to use it in place of whatever they are using now;
-It also assumes they can execute on these features better than we can. Since we want these features and already know how we are going to use them, that probably won't be the case; ...
-Your concerns are well-taken and prudent, but for the reasons outlined above, even if our competitors pick up on these features and use them, we will execute more effectively, and may also gain a certain amount of good will in some quarters as the funder of these new features.
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Depends on what you want. If you want to get the work done at a good price, being straightforward is IMO the best approach. If you want to piss the developer off, those approaches might work well. It's not like open source developers are (usually) trying to jack people up for a ton of money to implement paid features; IMO, most of them are very happy to have somebody pay them to work on their personal project and will do so at a very good price. "Very good" as in "You probably couldn't outsource it to sout
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It also missed the huge qualitative leap in responsiveness you get by paying someone anything. It's often not a lot---coders on many open-source projects will often offer to do things for "bounties", whose usual range (I've seen a lot of $500-$5000) is of the sort that would get lost in the noise of any major company's budget; we're talking getting a custom feature built to order for less than the cost of a week's business trip. And even when people aren't working for a lot, they see themselves as somewhat
Haven't seen that name in forever! (Score:2, Interesting)
Esther Schindler is a name I haven't seen in a long time and not one I expected to turn up on Slashdot! I'm pretty sure I can see my "Teach Yourself REXX in 21 Days" book over on my bookshelf from here!
simwiddy??? (Score:1)
I've never heard of simwiddy and Google returns nothing except this article. Anybody???
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It's ok - it's SimWitty. Good work Slashdot editors!
Sponsors Wanted (Score:2)
I've got this really stable, version 1.0 "Hello World" application. Want it to have flashing colored letters? Send $10 to thanks@suckers.com. I promise the proceeds will go directly to a 12 pack.
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I tried, but the Post Office returned it because that's not a valid address. Sorry, I was really looking forward to version 1.0 of Hello World Flasher Edition, too.
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Well, invest it into drugs, and you can still have your flashing letters. :P
Only for trivial stuff, or you'll get junk. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't likely to work for anything that needs to be architected, or is at all complex. What you're going to get, at best, is a collection of un-integrated features in search of a design. Of course, for some applications, that's good enough.
PyPy, the Python implementation written in Python, was developed in big "sprints". Six years on, it still doesn't work well enough to be used for anything.
There are too many bad programmers out there for "crowdsourcing" to work well. I put a moderately simple job on Rent-A-Coder once - I wanted an open source Python program to read WHOIS data from any registrars. This requires a tiny module for each registrar, and after writing a few myself I decided to outsource the next hundred registrar-specific modules. Four "Rent-A-Coder" programmers failed on that job.
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Quite often the max bids are a joke too. One example I often see is buyers wanting a copy of software x or website y for $500 max bid where
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I'd basicly consider it an extended job interview. See who's got sane ideas, sane estimates of what they can accomplish and sane code. If you get some working standalone addons too, great. Crowdsourcing = let's pretend people are stupid. And if they are that stupid, that we'll still get great results.
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So.. you think Drupal, Plone and simwiddy (examples given in the summary) don't need to be architected and are not complex?
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Approximately what wage were you offering, based on how long it would have taken you (you would probably be faster than someone you hired, you are going to know your requirements a little better, so this should maximize the wage)?
Whenever I have looked at those sites, from the other direction (looking for work to do), the requirements have been arbitrary and the compensation a pittance.
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The other irking thing is that often t
Jocks! (Score:3)
I'm sure there's a few college jocks that are willing to pretend they are geeks for some free pizza. On the other hand, the company looking for free workers is pretending to be a professional company, so it's all good.
Sprints (Score:4, Interesting)
"A sprint (sometimes called a Code Jam or hack-a-thon) is a short time period (three to five days) during which software developers work on a particular chunk of functionality."
I've seen this usually in reference to agile programming. I've seen agile programming used, and I have seen it used badly. Sprints are time boxed units within a scrum format. They're fixed length, start and end at set times, with goals specified within that format. I don't consider "code jams" to be sprints, and it's hard for me to picture 3-5 days as an effective sprint for the newly initiated. One of the first things you're told is the effective percentage of utilization of resources who are new to the sprint, new to the team or new to scrum format is reduced. It is through the iterative process that the people become better, that means multiple sprints to improve and streamline your process. Sprints are a way to prioritize work via planning sessions at the start, and view the good, bad and ugly in the retrospective at the end.
For larger projects this means 3-4 week sprints, with continuity from 1 sprint to the next. It not only requires leadership discipline, but team discipline. It just doesn't seem to be conducive for drawing volunteer work. It isn't a magic glue that allows new people to come together to make code happen.
Sprint considered harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop letting hypsters and random pointy-haired bosses define the language we use in our field?
I know "sprint" is meant to conjure up images of panting programmers tired after 3-4 days of grueling labour; togeether, they stand there at the end of the sprint feeling triumphant for winning the race and standing proud with the little, tiny, piece of the system they've built together.
However, to me at least, the term just sounds monumentally stupid. It's one of those "smoke and mirrors" kind of business words, where you re-label all the terminology everyone already uses to make it sound like you're doing something new and exciting. It's the kind of newsspeak that allows business people to find each other. Am I the only person who cringes when they hear the term "Scrum Master?"
I have a very useful "time box." It's called a week. It lasts seven days, two of which I rest in. It's quite a useful timebox because it is constant across all development teams, everywhere in the world! Fancy that.
IETF Code Sprints (Score:2)
The IETF has been conducting code sprints for a few years now, typically just before an IETF meeting. The next one is July 25th in Stockholm [ietf.org].
These are used both to get some useful tool development, and to get programmers interested in the work of the IETF. My understanding is that they have worked out pretty well, with a dozen or so people showing up for the San Francisco code sprint.
SimWitty: Wit instead of Wid (Score:3, Interesting)
The security app is actually called SimWitty [simwitty.org]. It is a security information management system. We got our alpha release sprint sponsored, with t-shirts, tech support, and the like. Getting the app off the ground has been a lot of fun.
As soon as we can figure out how to integrate Redmine with Subversion and Visual Studio, source code will be online. Which reminds me, thank you to the Slashdot audience for the discussion on bug trackers [slashdot.org]. It was a big help and we tried several before setting on Redmine.
Regards,
J Wolfgang Goerlich
Sprint? (Score:2)
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