Hi Vladimir;
hmmm, again, quite some points to think about... and a few
responses... ;)
Am Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:11:20 +0000
> get attention at time of fishing :) Anyway when you are designing
> some kind of software system I'm sure you are trying to make it
> scalable and unifiable as much as possible. So in process of
> designing motivation system please do not try to align its design to
> your personal chances to win the war of the attention.
You are right. But, reading especially the next paragraph, and thinking
about the whole issue of rewarding again, I came to a conclusion in the
question "What exactly do we want?"
* Do we want a system providing a reward for people who willingly and
voluntarily offered time, experience and other resources to the
project? - or -
* Do we want a system initially providing motivation for people who
wouldn't pay attention otherwise?
I remember a discussion like that on the NetBeans (NetCAT) mailing list
a while ago when some people, after NetCAT finished (NetCAT used to
have the approach of providing "winners" (...) with t-shirts, these
days), asked whether it wouldn't be possible to provide them with sweat
shirts or some more "valuable" clothing instead of just tees, and one
of the NetBeans folks used to ask "what? free IDE isn't enough?"
Actually, I made my mind on that I think... you have me strongly waving
each and every flag for a rewarding system to reward enthusiasts who
came here for the sake of it and, in the end, quietly would accept a
reward for their time and energy. But I have doubts in _starting out_
with a reward system to attract folks. This, IMHO, would put the wrong
thing in the first place...
[...]
> because I failed to see if the problem exists. Let me put your
> concern in more unified form. In my interpretation you are saying the
> following: "Why to introduce award schema for services that can be
> provided for free?" It's important question that we have to be
> prepared to answer on it.
[...]
No, you got me wrong here I think, that's why I cut off the rest of the
discussion and focus on that article (though most of your points on
that definitely are valid).
I do not believe you or I or we or anyone should rely upon services
provided for free. My only opinion, and this is where I tend to be a
little stubborn I guess... ( ;) ) is that money/economic reward is a
reward little promising to gather the kind of people one wants. It's
not about collecting free service and/or making people work for "us"(?)
free-of-charge. To me, it rather is about finding people that bring
"life" to the project, people who come running here, driven by
enthusiasm and encouraged by seeing they're capable of making a change
no matter how small. Put another way: make a system based upon
financial/economic reward, and you will attract people who will mainly
come to reap that reward rather than people who will come to get
something done and accept a reward (given there is one) afterward.
> > like this). The Ubuntu Mailing List is one of the friendliest
> > places> I've ever been, a place where a whole load of people are
> > places> likely to> quickly help you out without second thought. It
> > places> works... ;)
> One of the explanation friendliest of the Ubuntu forum could be that
> many of them working as network administrators and have more time on
> their hands comparing to typical developer. For them it could be some
> kind of "customer support" oriented training. Of course it would be
> interesting to organize "motivation survey" there and get more
> precise data on this.
I fully agree with you on the latter part (motivation survey). But then
again, 95% of the Ubuntu folks I personally know (and some of them I do
not just know "virtually") did sign the "Ubuntu Code Of Conduct"
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct ,
including myself to be accuracte. This is more than just being
"technical" or having too much spare time at hand. It's a motivation
and an attitude beyond these things, and I firmly believe in the
strength of this motivation as it is the driving force behind most of
nowadays open source projects.
> We could try to put in trade agreement with Oracle possibility to buy
> "Enterprise Manager" for dukes.Regarding your description how open
> source business model is working I agree completely with the picture
> you put here.In my previous letter I intentionally simplified related
> model to make point that this model is not ideal and need to be
> redesigned.It's very big topic that we could discuss a little bit
> later.
Ok, fine with me. :)
> > I honestly have to say that Eclipse and OSGi is the dominating>
> > technology in the JUG environment, and people seemed to stay away
> > from> Sun technology apart from the JDK of course.
>
> I honestly believe if Oracle will accept our trade policy Glassfish
> will quickly become dominated technology :)
Depends, I am not sure about that. I see (and each and every week again
learn) that quite some people are into Eclipse, Apache, Codehaus, ...
for the sole purpose of not depending upon one very business entity all
too much. Given that, the success of Glassfish will largely depend upon
how "open" Oracle will allow it to be.
[...]
> > enthusiasm and people doing things out of passion. I think that>
> > reaching those people is incredibly more difficult, and maybe there
> > are
> Just take in account how incredibly easy we can reach people when we
> have currency on the hands :)
Yes. We will. I am absolutely sure about that. But will that make the
project more effective, more powerful? Or will it "just" attract more
people which lack any enthusiasm, any fun or real, personal,
compassionate involvement and just are "in it for the money" (whether
virtual or real)?
Personally, looking around NetBeans folks, looking around earlier
FishCAT teams, I remember seeing people which used to be right that -
passionate about what they do. Maybe, in such a setup, boundaries tend
to be fuzzy between "testers", "users" and "street-team-alike
grassroots marketing". Provide users with a fair reason to get aware of
things, provide them with a small "care pack" (GlassFish stickers for
the notebook, maybe a GlassFish lawnyard to take care of your keys or a
decent GlassFish to wear on your tie when visiting customers), given
them a small sensation of being "part of it", of being and feeling
involved into something without "just" working on it. That, for sure,
is not something to feed you I guess, it eventually will be hard to
achieve this in a process which, at the core, is voluntary. But it
would motivate, and it will for sure be good for your resume. Maybe
FishCAT also could be a "GlassFish Street Team"? What do you think? ;)
K.
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