programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
In April I donated $5,000 of the ad revenue from this website to an open source .NET project. It was exciting to be able to inject some of the energy from this blog into the often-neglected .NET open source ecosystem.
As I mentioned at the time, I used a very hands off approach. While I did have some up-front criteria for the award (open source license, public source control, accepts outside source contributions) it's basically a no-strings grant.
The real money is being sent via wire transfer to Dario Solera, the ScrewTurn Wiki project coordinator. What's Dario going to do with this money? You'll have to ask him. That's not for me to decide. There are no strings attached to this money of any kind. I trust the judgment of a fellow programmer to run their project as they see fit.
When I said the project could do whatever they saw fit with the money, I meant it. Buy liquor and cigarettes, throw a huge party, play it on the ponies. I'm not kidding. As long as the project team believes it's a valid way to move their project forward, whatever they say goes. It's their project, and their grant.
I hadn't heard anything from Dario, and I was curious, so I followed up with him via email. He sent back this response:
The grant money is still untouched. It's not easy to use it. Website hosting fees are fully covered by ads and donations, and there are no other direct expenses to cover. I thought it would be cool to launch a small contest with prizes for the best plugins and/or themes, but that is not easy because of some laws we have here in Italy that render the handling of a contest quite complex.What would you suggest?
I was crushingly disappointed to find out the $5,000 in grant money has been sitting in the bank for the last four months, totally unused. That's painful to hear, possibly the most painful of all outcomes. Why did we bother doing this if nothing changes?
My friend Jon Galloway warned me this might happen. I didn't believe him. But what other conclusion can I draw at this point? He was right:
Open Source is to Traditional Software as Terror Cells are to Large Standing Armies – if you gave a terrorist group a fighter jet, they wouldn't know what to do with it. Open source teams, and culture, have been developed such that they're almost money-agnostic. Open source projects run on time, not money. So, the way to convert that currency is through bounties and funded internships. Unfortunately, setting those up takes time, and since that's the element that's in short supply, we're back to square one.
I had hoped that $5,000 grant money would be converted into something that furthered an open source project -- perhaps something involving the community and garnering more code contributions. But apparently that's more difficult than anyone realized.
Jon offered these ideas:
I must admit I'm at a bit of a loss here. Do you have any ideas for how the Screwturn Wiki project can use their $5,000 open source grant effectively? If so, please share them in the comments here, or on the ScrewTurn forum -- in the Suggestions and Feature Requests area.
Even I'm not naive enough to suggest that money can solve every open source software problem. But I don't have a lot of time to contribute; I only have advertising revenue. I'm absolutely dumbfounded to learn that contributing money isn't an effective way to advance an open source project. Surely money can't be totally useless to open source projects... can it?
With 5000 bucks, you could probably run a decent, professional usability test. And since usability is precisely what a developer's time can typically not buy, this would probably be a great investment for the money.
LKM on July 29, 2008 9:03 AMIf you have done some work with ScrewTurn or participate in the forum you know thata Dario is always there helping and developing.
So I guess the best way to spend the $5,000 is that Dario spend it on himself or a in trip or vacations.
Edddy on July 29, 2008 9:05 AMIf that money is still unclaimed, I'll take it.
Harry B. Garland on July 29, 2008 9:12 AMOpen source projects run on time, not money
Didn't Einstein prove that time = money?
Problem solved:
OSS needs time, not money. $5k not enough to hire someone for long enough to get him used to the project an then produce good code.
So, the best usage ever is: can some of the lead developers get a month or two off, without salary? If yes, he/they take the money, and work as much hours as they usually do for a living, on the project.
Normally they already have knowledge and motivation. They will spontaneously work on week-ends :-) This will have an awesome effect on the project.
Waren on July 29, 2008 9:17 AMAdvertising.
And then spend it on advertising.
And then, if there's any left, spend it on advertising.
You could have the best product in the world but it doesn't matter if no one knows you have it.
Skunkwaffle on July 29, 2008 9:25 AMOften times Open Source projects would benefit from considering better/different hardware. A web based application is different in that is runs on a server, which will define the requirements relatively well. But, desktop applications, for example can require testing on many different operating systems and hardware.
At the very least, it seems reasonable to consider buying new machines or upgrading the computers the use. This is especially true if people are using computers that are given to them by their companies, which could presumably cause a licensing conflict if a relationship goes bad. I've always had pretty awesome employers so this never happened, but I still tried to make sure I kept my development of open source and personal projects separate just so there would never be any confusion that it was my time that was spent.
Eric Larson on July 29, 2008 9:28 AMForget about the money. You said no strings. That means no strings. No following-up either. Let it go.
Dave on July 29, 2008 9:32 AMI say let it sit at ScrewTurn for a little while. Something will come of it, who says it needs to be spent right away. You have provided funds that might end up bailing them out when ads go low or when they need to anti up some cash.
You did and continue to do good stuff... be patient and don't underestimate Dario's ability to recognize when the time to use the money is right.
Rich on July 29, 2008 9:33 AMthe failure to use the money shows a crushing lack of imagination.
he could have:
- used the money to pay the rent while taking an unpaid week off from his day job to spend developing the product.
- gone to a conference and spent a few days getting drunk and telling anyone who will listen how great ScrewFaceWiki or whatever is.
- paid a freelancer to fix a few bugs
Spend it on GoogleAds.
Smirking Liberal on July 29, 2008 9:34 AMI think the money would be better used if you funded student projects. Students, like me, often have a bad time getting the a project going because we are bound to what universities wants. And universities only fund cientifical projects, like AI, math/physics simulations and so on (and the money is short). Me and some of my colleagues once wanted to start a project to build a PSP game, but we couldn't get the college to buy us a development kit and sony do not have projects to make that avaible to students. We were overwhelmed with all the bureaucracy and we gave up on our project. Indie PC games do not get attention anymore, we might as well go after web 2.0 stuff.
Hoffmann on July 29, 2008 9:36 AMI'm surprised they haven't been able to use it towards a new MSDN subscription for another developer or something like that. Those things do cost money, and it would seem like that would be the perfect fit for your donation.
Or a purchase of additional hardware to build a continuous integration / test machine.
Paul N. on July 29, 2008 9:37 AMI'm starting my own open source code project. Just as soon as somebody gives me $5000 and tells me what sort of open source project I should be conducting with it. No promises that the project will ever actually get finished, you understand...
Pete S on July 29, 2008 9:37 AM1. Pay for a new design for their site and a new logo for the screwTurn Wiki (maybe via a contest, like you've done with stack overflow)
2. Promote the software in .Net sites like codeproject.com
3. Pay a developer to make screwTurn mono compatible
Hugo on July 29, 2008 9:46 AMmaybe u need to send it to a project that needs money, my suggestion though it may be outside your area of interest, Blender (blender.org) they need more money for future projects and developments and I'm sure they wouldn't let it sit idle
yulebern on July 29, 2008 9:47 AMConcerning the idea of spending the $5000 on marketing:
I recently founded an Open Source marketing company and we in fact experienced similar difficulties with community-driven OSS projects. They either have a hard time collecting donations which allow them to invest in marketing, or, if they do have a budget available, they find it hard to come to a conclusion as to how a marketing strategy should look like due to conflicting visions concerning positioning of the OSS project.
OSS companies can much easier allocate their budget for activities that raise the visibility of their Open Source software, plus: they do have a natural interest in a focused marketing strategy allowing them to position themselves well against competitors.
Sandro Groganz on July 29, 2008 9:50 AMI'm pretty amazed that they don't know how to spend it. Use it to pay for flights and hotel so that all the involved programmers can meet up and discuss the project. Meeting face to face always gets an amazing amount done, but perhaps this isn't obvious to a team that is always distributed.
Edward Ross on July 29, 2008 9:51 AMI think you should strongly suggest that they get drunk and high and code in that state, i used to program for days on instant coffee and beer(one beverage, beware insane fizzing, part of the fun.) when i was bored the code is rarely worse off at the end of it.
Evan Skibin on July 29, 2008 9:53 AMFrom your original post : Microsoft's $5,000 grant will be handled independently; details will be forthcoming soon on that.
What did Microsoft do ? Did they send their share of the money too ?
Monkios on July 29, 2008 9:55 AMI think they should return the money to you.
Worse than them not using it is that you gave money to yet another undifferentiated wiki. Do we need another? Looked at another way, is it likely that THIS particular wiki will make a dent in wiki-space? I'd give money towards something that either:
a) breaks new ground or creates a new category
b) something that, if they had additional funds, had a chance of getting on the map in their category
Regards
Matt on July 29, 2008 9:56 AMWell, they can always use the money to move out of their parents' basement.
Richard on July 29, 2008 9:57 AMMay be Jeff, they need good developers or architechts more than they need money.
They might find skills of people like you more usefull.
Massive advertising blitz!
Practicality on July 29, 2008 10:03 AMAs in, put windows on all the pillows at the conference, or something equally fun.
These kind of things require some forethought and connections though. It make some time to stir them up.
Practicality on July 29, 2008 10:04 AMThey can print up some nice flyers, buy some useless chatchkies (sp) with their logo and website - hand them out at OSS developer cons try to attract more support. Maybe buy gear needed to film/record/edit/burn demo CD/DVDs.
If time is valuable - think what things $5,000 would get you that could save time (i.e. if you are stick on a desktop a laptop may be a good pick, maybe a better/faster printer, IDE license. Convention/symposium/training admission/airfare? (especially if dome developer is stick on adapting a new technology - class, video, books to get up to speed on AJAX or something)
I like ScrewTurn wiki, but it could be better. Compare it to Deki wiki. Hiring a good designer would be a good use of 5K. Their homepage is terrible. Other than that, I say send Dario to the PDC.
Maybe for future donations, open source projects should apply for grants for specific things. However, just because they haven't spent the money yet, doesn't mean it won't go to good use.
Lance Fisher on July 29, 2008 10:10 AMAlso, as to the repeated comments about hiring people, as was commented before I don't think $5000 (while a rather large sum of money to be donated in one piece) is likely to be able to buy anything remotely resembling a useful overhaul of the design of an application.
It's certainly not enough for a complete overhaul, but should cover a basic streamlining or a new logo (without too many revisions involved).
Pay for a new design for their site and a new logo for the screwTurn Wiki (maybe via a contest, like you've done with stack overflow)
Good god no -- contests are antithetical to the design process and just a nicer word for spec work, which most designers worth their salt will avoid like the plague.
Eric on July 29, 2008 10:17 AMWell I think money can help, but it has to reach a tipping point. $5K, while alot, doesn't solve the issue of time. But $80,000+ a year, and a OSS developer can start considering going full time.
$5000 doesn't buy you a whole lot of time.
Haacked on July 29, 2008 10:20 AMJeff,
Don't jump to conclusions. Is it me, or are you making a false logical leap here?
When you say contributing money isn't an effective way to advance an open source project
You are making the leap that contributing money doesn't help any open source project.
And that's just not true.
There are plenty of well-organized open source projects that need money every day.
The GNOME project posted a budget with a significant shortfall this year. I am sure they could use the money. They are just one instance. The Free Software Foundation allows for both general giving and directed giving to fund specific goals and projects such as the GNUstep Project, the GNUpdf Project and the Mailman Project. The Apache Foundation accepts donations and, at $5000, you could have had Bronze sponsorship status.
These organizations use the money to manage their infrastructure, support office staffs, hire fellows and interns, and run conferences.
I think you just chose badly.
I wonder if you made the mistake of not asking the organization if they needed
Jim on July 29, 2008 10:21 AMPerhaps the problem is that it's too much money? If I were to receive 2,500 I would probably buy a car, but if I were to receive 2,500,000 I would probably spend a bit and leave the rest. To a project that has survived without money it's almost the equivalent.
Maybe it's the fact that projects are being given money without the explicit need for it. It'd be good to see you and a couple of other software professionals band together with some earnings and form a 'Dragon's Den' type scenario, where Open Source Projects could pitch a request for money to you.
Mike on July 29, 2008 10:23 AMThe project you donated to is just being retarded. Software developers time is in short supply, so you buy their time, just like any company does. It would be really easy for them to use it like summer of code does. I am currently a summer of code student so I know its easy. They just put up on their website that they are seeking say 8 weeks of full time work on their project to be reimbursed with $5000. Accept applications which state qualifications and what they would propose to work on and accomplish. Accept one and have someone get regular updates on their work and advise them. Pay them at half way and completion of their work is they actually do the work. You could split some of the money off to pay the person who has to do the advising and application stuff.
Ian on July 29, 2008 10:25 AMLooks like Mozilla Russia have put a bounty on some bugs, so one suggestion is to pay for known bugs to be fixed:
http://www.mozilla-russia.org/contribute/bounty-en.html
The previous commenter's suggestion to pay for artwork sounds the most useful to me though. Many of us can code but are bad at graphic design.
Tom on July 29, 2008 10:26 AMI think he should give the money back to you.
There is no such thing as no strings attached. Clearly you did attach strings (open source, blah, blah, blah) and secondly the psychological principle of reciprocation means that the recipient of your gift will feel extremely obligated to provide something in return. In fact you've probably done more harm than good by providing this donation, at best it's been a useless distraction for the developer.
A lot of small open source software gets written because its fun to write code. It isn't a full time job and never will be, throwing money at one of these developers is like giving your neighbor $5k to spend on his woodworking hobby. Imagine how obligated you'd feel if that happened to you.
Andrew on July 29, 2008 10:27 AMHaving an artist paid for graphics sounds like a really good idea. Indeed, I agree with Gary. Most OpenSource projects produce software that looks little appealing compared to commercial software. E.g. see KDE. KDE 4.1 looks almost acceptable, everything before it looked rather poor. If KDE was a commercial project, already the first released had looked similar to 4.1, why? Because if it does not look appealing, people won't buy it. Since OS software is not sold, it does not have to look appealing, thus it doesn't.
Or Firefox. starting with Fx 3 it starts looking nice, everything before was more or less ugly (depending on which platform you used it). It might be just eye candy, but eye candy is what the user loves to see, even though the developer will say it's a waste of time.
If they pay an artist for it, they will own the resulting graphics and can offer them under OS license again, that way everything stays OS and other OS projects are even free to copy the graphics for their apps as well, so it helps everyone, not just one single project.
Mecki on July 29, 2008 10:28 AMWell first of f'ing all, if it's just going to sit somewhere it shouldn't be sitting in a bank. Put it where it can accrue interest at a rate better than %1. A CD, high-interest savings, something.
Secondly, I'm looking at their page and it's ugly. Hire a designer to come up with a custom theme for their homepage. Have the designer create a series of themes for their wiki. I'm looking at their user themes page and there's only one theme listed, the default theme. Maybe a lot of the pages haven't been updated with new content and that's why I can't see any theme previews? Which brings me to my third point.
Hire someone to maintain update content every now and then if the authors don't have any time. Heck if the authors don't have time, take a week of vacation, pay them a weeks salary out of the grant, and update the content.
Maybe offer $50 a person to anyone who wants to do a Ooovo/Skype/Whatever usability session.
Sure, go to PDC, have fun. Maybe instead of snoring through sessions they could host a Screwturn user group party at PDC. Good marketing, bound to be a few users of Screwturn wiki at PDC. Maybe buy a booth at PDC?
It's $5000, lots of opportunity for big bang or long term activities.
Scott on July 29, 2008 10:29 AMOpen sourcers give time for free but still need to pay the bills so
* Buy Hardware
* Buy Time : Pay for someone already contributing to take time off to blitz the code
* Buy Time and Expertise : Pay for an expert to add to the project (Graphic designer, Web Designer, etc..)
* Buy enthusiasm : Pay for prizes for best contribution?
My assumption is that the recipient didn't solicit you for the donation, but I'm not sure it would matter if he had. I don't remember anyone being required to submit a I'll do this if you give me the check. statement.
I don't have a Do this if someone gives me a big check list and suspect that I might just stick the money in the bank too. Seems prudent to me. There might be a point where that money is needed - if advertising or donations fall, then the cash will be there to take care of the hosting needs. Or maybe six months from now, there will be a need for the funds for another reason. It'll be there when that reason comes up.
Not sure why this is a big deal - you did specify that there weren't any strings attached, right? I find it interesting that you are crushingly disappointed because the guy hasn't spent the money yet... is it burning a hole in your pocket? Obviously it isn't burning one in his.
Hefty Smurf on July 29, 2008 10:35 AMI like the idea of hiring somebody outside the expertise of the team to provide a service like a technical writer or marketing stuff.
Use the money to buy what you can't get, not what you can get with time.
Databyss on July 29, 2008 10:36 AMThrough open source enthusiasts are mostly developers, there must be some people in the community who are lawyers, buissinessmen, marketers, etc. Could it become standard for open source projects to have one guy like that onboard too just to help do things like this (ie investment) with their time-donation?
George Mauer on July 29, 2008 10:39 AMI second all those that mentioned hiring a designer. Their product could use some serious help from more right-brained individuals.
In the end, successful software is about user experience, not sweet code.
Mark Johnson on July 29, 2008 10:48 AM@Lacrymology:
Please note: Open Source means just that - open, publicly-available source code. Nowhere is it written that just because code is written in .NET that it is not open source.
Thank you.
James on July 29, 2008 10:49 AMForget about the money. You said no strings. That means no strings. No following-up either. Let it go.
+1 to Dave!
mikeb on July 29, 2008 10:56 AMWhy on earth is your entire site in *italics* - my goodness man, this has to stop.
Anon on July 29, 2008 11:00 AMHi Jeff!
I'm a VB.net developer, but I started my web developing with PHP as there's no free ASP.net server. So now (after a year) I bought a PHP hosting and not a ASP.net one, because I become PHP Pro. So I think the first think is to make available a free ASP.net hosting for beginners. it won't costs a lot (i think so) but will help many people and startups.
Hi Jeff!
I'm a VB.net developer, but I started my web developing with PHP as there's no free ASP.net server. So now (after a year) I bought a PHP hosting and not a ASP.net one, because I become PHP Pro. So I think the first think is to make available a free ASP.net hosting for beginners. it won't costs a lot (i think so) but will help many people and startups.
BTWN I got the following error on my first post for the comment
Rebuild failed: Renaming tempfile 'C:\codinghorror\blog\archives\001158.html.new' failed: Renaming 'C:\codinghorror\blog\archives\001158.html.new' to 'C:\codinghorror\blog\archives\001158.html' failed: Permission denied
Omar Abid on July 29, 2008 11:01 AMIt was posted twice different version :( :) delete the two last ones!
Omar Abid on July 29, 2008 11:02 AMI have read halfway through the comments. I'll digest them all later so sorry if this have been said before.
I agree that opensource project need time and not money. But money can 'buy' time. The team could use the money on tools. Better IDE's could increase productivity. throw a party for the team, while may seem like useless improves morale and is especially usefull for old projects where the devs are burnt out and commitment maybe wavering. A good chair or new egonomic keyboards for all coders can improve productivity more than another software engineering book.
There are so many ways that the project can benefit without spending money directly on it. At the end of the day the project is the people. You spend the money on the people then you can;t be wrong.
Spending on advertising is not too important i think. I believe that the current OSS scene is strong enough that any good project will get the attention it deserve.
That's my 2cents.
paan on July 29, 2008 11:13 AMWhat are the three biggest recurring knocks against OSS and at the same time the things that nobody seems to want to donate to?
DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION.
If the $5K could be used to assist either ScrewTurn WIKI or anything else in producing quality documentation, tutorials, or other valuable non-code artifacts, then that seems to me to be the thing most worth doing: spend the $$$ for things that you CANNOT get contributors to volunteer time to accomplish.
Steve B. on July 29, 2008 11:18 AMThey should have 1 person spend 8 hours a dya day-trading with your 5,00.... then give you 10% of any profits every month
Red on July 29, 2008 11:18 AMContinuous integration server, unless they already have one.
Other machines to test on: low end, high end hardware, different OS versions, patchlevels, etc.
Mini conference: usually generates lots of coding activity, new sub-projects, etc.
You had a blog entry about fighter jets and fast turnarounds: upgrades to existing hardware for that purpose.
Commercial development tools, for QA, tests with different compilers, bug spotting. 5k might not go far.
But it's always easier to tell someone else how to spend ths money, strangely...
hgs on July 29, 2008 11:31 AMWhen not spending money is a bad thing you know the economics of the situation are f-ed up.
Matt on July 29, 2008 11:50 AMSo, I think your experiment revealed a problem in how you approached the problem (which is sort of the point of an experiment, I guess).
In a lot of companies you have at least one business guy that handles lots of non-programming tasks so that the devs can just develop the product. You know, like getting office space, taking care of payroll, lining up sales, taking care of the website, buying pizza during crunch time, authorizing new purchases, etc, etc.
It appears that this organization has no such person. It's technical leadership for a technical project.
If you want to get the $5K used well, the easiest way is to find a good use, then briefly take that management role. If they need a designer, find one, hire him, and manage him to improve the design. If they need computers, find out what specs they need and take care of the transaction. If they want to have a f2f meeting/party/sprint of the major devs, figure out their schedules, find a good deal on accommodations and travel, and organize an agenda. If an intern is the best idea, find one, find a bite-sized task, set up interviews, and hire him.
This group apparently has lots of technical leadership, but having them organize any of those things would take the best programmer away from programming. They need an administrator to contribute time.
Many OSS groups have management/administration (Mozilla is a good example), and these can take advantage of donations better than smaller groups can.
Tom Finnigan on July 29, 2008 11:51 AMIf some people in the development team have other jobs and developing Screwturn in their spare times, they can take a non-paid break from their jobs for the total of days that money can cover concentrate on the project at that period.
Umut on July 29, 2008 12:00 PMThere are several ways to use the money imho:
1. Buy some books, old school or eBook, or subscription for Safari?
2. Hire a professional artist for CSS, logo and other eye candy.
3. Buy some professional tools for profiling, lint, etc
4. Buy a beer for the dev and main contributors as moral stimulation.
5. Sponsor the travel and itinerary for a talk in OSCON to spread the word
6. Buy some AdWord to spread the word
7. Buy some gadgets(ex. iPhone) for accessibility testing?
You admirably donate money to one project, which appears to be unable to easily use the money for legal reasons, and you therefore infer that donating to all open-source projects is a lost cause? Perhaps the $5000 could buy a larger sample space?
Alex Reynolds on July 29, 2008 12:11 PMI guess $5.000 will hire you a top-notch full time programmer for two months in Italy. I'm in Spain and the two countries are about at the same level.
Cheers Good luck.
GUI Junkie on July 29, 2008 12:15 PMOne big problem is that $5000 just isn't a lot of money. If it were a few billion, they could just buy a building and staff it with lots of people.
The best use, is for a summer co-op student. Get a local software company to volunteer some office space and a computer, then use the money to hire a co-op to refactor some of the uglier code. Supervising the work (for free) is the biggest problem, get past that and it's easy.
Possible called it a micro-grant and let the student work from home? It should be 'tangible' work, that can be monitored.
Paul.
Use it for a couple development machines, or a front end web proxy or other component of the wiki system. Its tempting to wait for the 100% ideal use for the money however since you do want it spent, the lesson might be to just spend it now on something less than ideal.
NR on July 29, 2008 12:26 PMThe simplest way to spend the money is never the easiest. There seems to be various ways they could handle this.
If they have a contest for best plug-ins, etc, they could hire a lawyer to review the contest details for legalities as well as review their license for the project to make sure it is fully within the realm required.
They could use the money to better promote the project. AdWords, PPC, etc., all would make use of the money to make the project bigger.
However, there was one suggestion thus far that really would make this project a bigger project without making the money directly change it. Purchase another computer, and bring in local high school kids to work part-time on this project. In a way, they could do this at home, however, this would be a learning experience for everyone. Use the money for transportation, items, another computer, etc all to allow the project to not grow bigger by users, but grow bigger by the experience of working with and on the project.
I think next time you give money, you need to give out a certain boundary of the cash use...$1,000 for marketing to an OSP, $1,000 for server upgrades, $1,000 for legal costs, etc.
Just my 2 pennies
JMB on July 29, 2008 12:26 PMI think the problem is Italy; I'm Italian and live in Italy, so I know what I'm talking about.
It is almost impossible for any individual to put up a contest in italy, too many complicated laws to fight against...
I think the simpler thing he could is to work on the project full time for a while, that is 5000$/his_daily_rate_at_work days, or hire someone to do so.
I'm late to the commenting, so nobody will ever read this, or it's a dupe, but I'm not reading through all the comments to try and figure that out.
They should pay people to set up a ScrewTurn Wiki site of their own. Have a contest. Top site gets $1000, then $500, then $100 to a bunch of little guys, and maybe even some smaller prizes. Make the contest go on for a year, to see who can accumulate the most content, users, and also judge things based on originality.
The best thing they could ask for is for more people to be using their product. More real world testing, more motivation for people to send in patches, more reason for other companies to put ads on their site.
Eric Kibbee on July 29, 2008 12:39 PMWhy didn't you ask how the money would be used before you made the donation?
Phil Atio on July 29, 2008 12:55 PMUm, I have an open source project. I would happily take the $5k - I'd use it as encouragement to keep developing open source projects and would probably pay down my loans.
Although, since I am the sole maintainer/developer of my project, maybe I would feel less guilt using it as personal payment than I would if I had a huge development team.
Andy on July 29, 2008 12:57 PMNo shortage of ideas here!!
El on July 29, 2008 1:13 PMYou hit the oldest and most pervasive problem in philanthropy: What to do with the money?
It's not an easy problem to solve, ever. The problem is compounded by the fact that solving the problem takes time, which effectively eats into the contribution. Effective charitable organizations try to minimize their administrative costs, but they don't eliminate administration.
What you've set up is a charitable organization that has no administration, that the money goes unused (or is used poorly) shouldn't be a surprise.
If you're serious about letting the project organizer spend it on beer, then why not just send him $5,000 worth of beer? I imagine that it's because you're not sure that beer is what he really wants or needs.
But figuring out what the .Net open source community really wants or needs will take time and, yes, money. (There are a lot of good ideas in the comments, but to know which ones are actually good requires testing.)
Finally, much of the problem here is a matter of scale. at $5,000 a pop, with distributed administration, admin costs will eat significantly into each grant. If, however, you increase the size of a grant you can benefit from economies of scale.
So here's my suggestion. Save your money. Don't give out $5,000 grants. Save it up and help found an organization dedicated to supporting the .Net open-source community.
Patrick on July 29, 2008 1:14 PMI would suggest paying for documentation.
Most open source projects are poorly documented, no one likes to do that, it's a chore. In other words, outsource the thing they lack the most, that the least amount of people want to do, and that has the biggest gains for the world (including the person donating).
But whatever you decide, I would suggest being specific about it. For example if you just give money, then it might be too big a decision involving too many people (who should get the money, who should we fly, where will the party be, who do we hire, etc.). If you specifically assign it to a task, it's delegated for the project and there are no hurt feelings ;)
Stephane Grenier on July 29, 2008 1:25 PMI wonder, what is apache doing with the $ 100.000 they receive from Microsoft?
http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html
Eduardo Diaz on July 29, 2008 1:39 PMBoy, I would be glad to get even one tenth of that prize. The project I'm working on (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Kosmos) needs a lot of quite fat and expensive books on computer graphics and cartography. And I would also like to host a web map.
So no problem in spending money here :)
They should pay someone to set up a bug tracking system (bugzilla or whatever) for this project, for replacement of the actual way of bug reporting/tracking/solving, which is a forum section. That person should also migrate the bug reports in the forum to the new platform. That would improve the usability of the project, and the developers own way of handling and keeping track of bugs.
As alternatives, make a bug squashing contest with the money going for the guy that solves more (reported) bugs in one defined month. Or pay someone to do the translation to one still not supported language (noticed that there's no Portuguese support yet, for instance). Now, you need to have in mind that spending money also takes time ;-) If they don't want to spend that time, then suggest to use that money to finance other Open Source project - they're using phpBB, an phpBB is trying to get money by displaying advertisements, so maybe they could use that money to place an ad on phpBB website. And they use an wordpress blog with a theme made by Fahlstad.se - which is asking for PayPal donations - so they could always give them the money. Or - heck - give the money to any other open source software they like, as they seem fit.
On open source projects and money (in general), I must say that I don't really see that this example can be taken as conclusive. I have some examples of open source projects that make good use of the money given to them, and others that actually are in need of money to do some things. In doubt, you can always help the Free Software Foundation, for instance. Recently a Google SoC-like event started in Portugal, where money is the reason for 10 new Open Source projects.
Mind Booster Noori on July 29, 2008 1:53 PMMost open source projects are lacking in documentation, and are therefore only used by experienced developers. Hiring a technical writer to produce good, quality documentation would be an excellent use for the funds.
Tim on July 29, 2008 1:55 PMSimply sitting on the money may be one of the best possible things to can do with such a sum - saving for a rainy day, if you like. Having funds that can be deployed rapidly during unforeseen circumstances can help to reduce the impact of potential threats to the stability and continuity of a project, and is a tell-tail sign of a mature, forward-looking community.
One common scenario that free software projects encounter is legal threats from opportunistic companies and poisonous individuals. I'm not thinking so much of the large patent trolls or the giant software behemoths on their annual reign-of-terror against which a small sum will provide inadequate protection, but rather the threats from the smaller imps which can still have a significant negative effect by wasting the project leaders' time and energy that would better be spent on coding and project management.
I have on a couple such occasions put donations to my projects to good use to publicly rebut idle threats. I'd rather invest a small amount towards some well-written legal advice than waste time arguing perpetually in matters about which I have only limited authority.
Like most free software developers, I do not expect payment as compensation for the time spent on my own projects. If this were the case I would have abandoned them long ago since there is no conceivable way that I am likely to receive the amount I would expect for upholding the long-term responsibility to fix bugs and protect people's investment in the project by adding such new functionality necessary to maintain its relevance in the marketplace. It would surely make more sense to be paid on contract for programming somebody else's project (commercial or otherwise) where the responsibility ceases as soon as the money stops coming in!
Essentially, I enjoy working on free software projects for a variety of non-commercial reasons that I'll not enumerate here. I wholeheartedly agree that the life-blood of free software is the developer time that can be volunteered to it, and this is a precious commodity. I have on several occasions used lump sum donations in exchange for my time that I would otherwise have been required to place into something more mundane, for instance to pay for a garage to fix the car (instead of doing it myself) so that I could spend the weekend coding on project - essentially buying back my own time!
I think that the above scenario represents another good use of rainy-day donations that the benefit of a free software project, although I know other (more ascetic) developers that would be quick to disagree.
In my opinion not spending the money isn't a bad thing at all. Eventually they will have expenses, be it hardware, a designer, furniture, office space or a library of Jeff's recommended readings. Until then, let the money collect interest, why hurry to spend it right away?
Manu on July 29, 2008 1:57 PMI would suggest sending enough money for some good weed to get through long nights of coding.
pether on July 29, 2008 1:57 PMI would suggest sending enough money for some good weed to get through long nights of coding.
pether on July 29, 2008 1:58 PMI'd go with the hardware suggestion, if he wanted to (or felt an obligation to) spend it on something directly related to the project. Otherwise what OSS thrives on most is the people involved, so how about a good holiday as a personal reward for the people involved?
mh on July 30, 2008 2:12 AMI'm not sure about the open source .NET project but I surely know how would i invest that kind of money and even more in creating a Non-Profit Organization specialized on quality open source game development (cross-platform).
IMHO improving the gaming experience on open source operating system will highly attract more users to the open source desktop side and indirectly scale development, as well as market share of Linux and related projects...
Anyway, I'm already working on this for quite some time, but getting the necessary funds required for a great start will take me a few months of work :-)
If anyone interested in this, feel free to ask questions: dk.vali@gmail.com
P.S.: Any kind of help will be likely very appreciated.
Best regards,
Vali
I suggest to buy liquor and cigarettes, throw a huge party and play it on the ponies.
JoeScylla on July 30, 2008 2:15 AMFirst, the fact that they didn't spend money doesn't indicate anything wrong. It just indicates they want to use the money efficiently for the project instead of wasting it. I could see 3 potential uses of the money, 1 1 good, 1 OK and one outright bad.
Outright BAD :
*giving to developpers or contractors
It will create ill-will among unpaid (or less paid) developpers
OK :
* hiring someone for quality insurance or graphical design
It may improve the software in one of the areas where finding volunteers seems the hardest
Good :
* hiring some corporate seller, who will try to sell the software to users, by organising demos and targeted advertising. This will make the project more widely use, hence more popular, and it may also bring a certain number of new developpers
How would I spend it if I were a young project looking for more talent? Go to some conferences and see if I can drum up interest by presenting. It's a good way of getting more talent onto your team, and possibly even more people interested in using your software.
Katie on July 30, 2008 3:05 AMWell done Jeff for giving them the money. You could always console yourself that it's the thought that counts? I bet it boosted their morale to receive the money... In that spirit I will get busy clicking your ads :)
Andrew on July 30, 2008 3:21 AMI think they used the money well by not spending it right away. It is emergency money that will become useful at an unexpected time. By spending it needlessly now, that would be wasting its true purpose.
Also, you mentioned it was a no strings attached donation, so it's probably better if you forget about it (and perhaps not even follow up on it). By following up with the recipient of the donation, it implies that there's a still a string attached. I would think of it as a payment or one-time salary to the project creator that he has earned through hard work.
rob on July 30, 2008 3:30 AMI think your main problem is that $5000 is both too much and not enough. It's enough to be a burden, not enough to actually employ someone for much time. And it's a particularly awkward amount to bestow on someone without their having a way to use it.
And of course money means different things depending on what your specific work is. I have a friend who recently got wooed to a brand new university with an offer than all faculty got some arbitrary sum, say $20,000, as a personal research budget. Scientists thought this was a paltry sum -- not nearly enough to do a lot of good with -- but my friend is an historian, and so he has way more money than he knows what to do with (trips to archives only cost so much).
I think the problem here is that your generosity led you to a throw money at it sort of solution. Spending doesn't get results. Spending _intelligently_ gets results.
Shmork on July 30, 2008 4:18 AMMaybe they can spend the money on education. Like booking a customized workshop from a well-known and honored training company (including hotel and supply)?
Wow .. many of you sure are critical and mean.
Poor Dario, who out of the blue receives some money for his project, and because he doesn't have a good idea of how to spend it, waits. Yeah, what a jerk.
The money may have come with no strings attached, but imagine the backlash had Dario spent the money frivolously and Jeff reported back here. In fact, no matter how he spent it there'd be some know-it-all complaining bitterly. DDOS Witchhunt or what? Lets fry the bastard.
It has nothing to do with laudable goals such as 'open source programmers don't need money' Everyone needs money, and your company probably doesn't spend money haphazardly either.
If Dario has nothing to spend it on, then prudently, he shouldn't spend it. Thanks go to some of you with good ideas.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Read a book on constructive criticism on day. Shame on you. Didn't your momma ever tell you that if you've got nothing good to say, shut up?
Let the guy use it as a buffer.
$5K in the bank buys a lot of concentration since he won't have to worry about the day his computer crashes or if the ad revenue drops or something.
Google has a couple billions in the bank, Microsoft as well - there's a reason they're not just burning through that money.
tcliu on July 30, 2008 4:32 AMI would use it to pay volunteer's travel and accomodation costs to a conference or a small meeting.
marcus on July 30, 2008 4:39 AMWell, I have a better idea,
Buy me some .net books from amazon, give me a small part of the money, and I will learn and code .NET for you ...
:D
karatchov on July 30, 2008 4:45 AMCan I suggest a professional debugger/patcher team? Mostly, open source project don't have some people that collect bug reports, priritize them, and do a patching. Open Source is based primarily on volunteers, so it would be nice if someone is payed for full time patching. Mozilla foundation pays for its developers, so... why not?
Blackstorm on July 30, 2008 5:17 AMMy .02 euros:
- Don't pay for coding, especially not by setting up a regular program to pay bounties or whatever. You've already got coders, and you risk a negative effect on the culture of the effort by introducing payment to coders.
- One suggestion I haven't seen (at least after plowing through about the first 1/5 of comments) is organising a get-together for the developers. $5,000 could pay for a small venue and a dinner or two in a mutually-agreed city, developers can pay their own way out. Some face to face time can have a really positive impact.
- Failing that, I agree with spending it on some specialist (non-coding!) effort that you can't easily get contributed, such as usability, design, or documentation. Just make sure it's done in a way that can be maintained going forward, a pretty package of docs or whatever will start decaying the minute the next code commit comes in.
Kief on July 30, 2008 5:34 AMhow about open-source games like UFO Alien Invasion, TORCS and many more? some say open source doesn't work for games. perhaps, because of high quality art/content that is expensive. an open-source game project could benefit from a donation by buying royality free 3d models, textures, sounds, or paying professionals for creating them and then releasing them under some Creative Commons lincense...
mantrid on July 30, 2008 5:43 AMUse the money to pay for a week not working on the project. Pay for some food and drink for the office for two weeks, get the devlopers to come in and work on whatever they want, in whatever field and however they want to do it.
Promote looking at new technologies, but try getting some form of deliverable from all developers at the end of the two weeks, a presentation on how things went for them, how they liked the technology, or even better, a working application.
Then have a night out.
This will help open up the imagination again and will allow your developers to come back to the project, fresh with new ideas, and an improved view of their peers.
goatslayer on July 30, 2008 5:45 AMI like the idea of having a rainy day fund - ready access to cash can really make a difference when important hardware goes bang, or some other minor catastrophy occurs.
Not sure if anyone has suggested this, but if the money has to be spent why not use the money to donate usable internet access, hosting and a copy of ScrewTrun Wiki to Charities and not for profit organisations? I have included useful internet access here as many charities just can't afford access, so having a nice shiney new website would be close to useless for them as they woudln't be able to update the information.
Stuart on July 30, 2008 5:55 AMDepending on where everyone involved is, it might be worthwhile to get a retreat/meetup for the dev team. I run a one-man project[0] that is mostly dependent on another one[1], and last year I was sponsored by a commercial integrator[2] of both projects to visit LinuxWorld with them - getting some facetime for a week was the most valuable part of the whole thing. Things go faster and smoother when you are all in the same room. Depends on the project and the geography of course - $5K doesn't cover *too* much travel.
Other than that, my project is mostly self-sustaining - I've used ad revenue to pay for some design work, and some hosting. As Jeff says, time is the big issue, especially time when you actually feel motivated to work in the evenings/weekends.
[0] http://www.network-weathermap.com/
[1] http://www.cacti.net/
[2] http://www.groundworkopensource.com/
Can't they just give the devs a bonus?
wtf....Booohooo i don't know what to do with money...sheez i wish i had that problem.
Joe Beam on July 30, 2008 7:19 AMI think offering up a bounty for a feature - or perhaps paying a software-testing house to do usability metrics or something for your 2.5K could be money really well spent.
Money is the reason people do shit jobs, so that's what the money should be used for IMHO. Testing, Documentation, Marketing.
Philluminati on July 30, 2008 7:28 AMYou would be surprised at how much presentation affects open source projects.
Professional logo design and some very professional usability focused themes for the site/project would do wonders.
Compare the presentation of Deki Wiki to ScrewTurn, ScrewTurn would obviously be my choice, but at face value most would explore Deki first due to presentation.
I would absolutely love to see ScrewTurn with some high dollar makeup on. I think it would be amazing.
Matt on July 30, 2008 7:31 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe via email
|
|
Traffic Stats |