Bounty Systems

All,

 

I ran across this article while doing some research.  Thought people might be interested. 

 

http://dneary.free.fr/gimp_bounties.html

 

I have not personally decided if bounty systems are good or bad, but I do think that it is very difficult to do properly. 

 

Just FYI,

 

Ron Teitelbaum

[hidden email]

indeed interesting

Stef

On 17 mars 06, at 19:42, Ron Teitelbaum wrote:

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 13:42 -0500, Ron Teitelbaum wrote: What I take from this is that if bounties are offered at all, they
should be small.  I don't mean that the dollar amounts should be small,
but that the goal to be met for the bounty should be small.  Anything
that would take more than a week of part time (say a total of 10 hours)
of work and need to be represented by multiple milestones needs to
somehow be broken up into seperate milestones, hopefully ones that can
be tackled by more than one person (although not necesarily
simultaneously).

I should of course note for completeness that I am not in favor of
bounties being offered by SqueakFoundation.  I have no problem with
offers from 'unofficial' individuals.

Ken

small, but perhaps crucial self-correction:

"Anything that would take more than a week of part time (say a total of
10 hours) of work and need to be represented by multiple milestones
needs to somehow be broken up into seperate BOUNTIES..."

Ken

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 13:38 -0600, Ken Causey wrote:

Hi Ken

I would like to know then if you have ideas how we could
        - influence the dev or fixes of certain parts of squeak
        - pushing so that something get done because pilling money even if  
this is not a lot
        is not good either (like in the army I would like to be able to say  
that we spent
        everything and that we need more :)

Stef
>
> Ken
>

Draft of my reply, I appreciate any comments you have.

Ken

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 20:50 +0100, stéphane ducasse wrote: Well, this may put me in the context of a 'laissez-faire' open-source
developer (leave well enough alone and let it take it's own course), but
I'm not of the opinion that it's possible to 'influence'
or 'push' for further development within the community on anything other
than a narrow or short-term basis.  In the end people are only going to
work on something that provides some form of return.

Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form.  I
think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining.  What I mean is that a bounty
is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
development will falter.  At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
to be that it kills the community.

So what else can we do:

Other forms of return include acquiring fame and of course the best form
is meeting a personal need.

In the fame category we have:

Individually, we can 'lead from the front'. In other words, lead by
doing and hope that a sufficient number of others follow our example.
The 'followers' gain fame here by being associated with someone or some
project they either personally esteem or they perceive as being esteemed
by others.  If they don't follow maybe that simply means that no one
else cares for where you appear to be going.  You might then consider
whether you have properly communicated your intentions.

We can make more of an effort to congratulate progress and encourage the
efforts of others.  This demonstrates to the developer that his actions
are noticed and appreciated.
 
In the need category:

We can listen to the needs that the individuals have in our community
and encourage development targeting those needs.  This one straddles
both categories because it encourages the one to participate in the
community by showing that their needs can be met and encourages the
other by providing something they can do to acquire recognition.

We can remind those that express a need that their need would most
quickly be met if they participate in the development required.

These are all small things that can only affect small parts of the
community over short periods of time.  However a lot of small things can
add up to a big thing.

Ultimately I think we can only do 2 things:

1.  Work on what we as individuals think is important and individually
influence our cohorts to participate in that work.

2.  Encourage and reward the work that others are doing that they find
important.

Anything else, if effective, artificially move the community away from
where it would have naturally gone, so it is very unlikely to be
self-sustaining.  Otherwise, it's simply a waste, not having acheived
anything.

Ken

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 16:17 -0600, Ken Causey wrote:
> Draft of my reply, I appreciate any comments you have.
>
> Ken

Hmm, ignore this bit.  Bryce kindly read over a draft of this email and
made some suggestions.  Then I promptly forgot to remove this.

Ken

Ken Causey wrote:
> Draft of my reply, I appreciate any comments you have.

I saw your other email, nevertheless I will comment. :)

> On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 20:50 +0100, stéphane ducasse wrote:
[snip Stef's email]

I disagree because you leave out too many variables.
The community in general has skills, time and money.

I have skills to use Squeak and to develop with Squeak in many ways. But
I am most definitely limited in my scope.

Others have the skills but have not the time or interest.

I may have a desire or need for which I have not the skill to develop,
but have the skill to use.

Others may have a need for which they have the skills to develop and
use, but have not the time.

Bounties (money) is an inducement for sometime to spend time using their
skills for someone else's interest. Most of us do it everyday, its our job.

Example:

What if I wanted to be able to use my favorite database, say SQLite or
such with Squeak. I have no C or low level skills. But give me a driver
and the methods to access said database and I'm a happy guy. If I
want/need such, but no one else in the community with the skills and the
time has such a need, then an inducement may provide incentive to
someone to develop such.

I don't believe that any such development would flounder after
development any more than any other code.

And the codes existence may be inducement for others to use at some
point, because it has become an available option.

Nor do I believe such would cause any negative directional change.

I only wish I had the funds to hire some Squeak developers. :)
Oh well.

Now if were talking about development for developments sake and simply
attempting to fulfill a laundry list of features...
I'll agree with you. That is wrong and wasteful.

But I do believe there are legitimate needs that can be met by proper
monetary inducements. Doing it right is the challenge.

Jimmie

On Fri, 2006-03-17 at 16:52 -0600, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> Ken Causey wrote:
> > Draft of my reply, I appreciate any comments you have.
>
> I saw your other email, nevertheless I will comment. :)

Good, I didn't mean to stifle comments. ;)

First of all, I agree that your example here has a higher likelihood of
success and a lower chance, with that success, of being a danger to the
community.

In the first case, as I have stated earler in this thread, I have less
problem with bounties provided by individuals on an 'unofficial' (i.e.
not representing the community as a while) basis.  Also your example has
a fairly clear end point and is not a terribly large project.  If
someone takes up the bounty and the project can be fully funded to
completion, then I see a reasonable chance of success.  Also this
example is one where the final result is one that is reasonable stable.
It should continue to work unless the protocol changes in some way, and
the fixes necessary to deal with any such changes are likely reasonably
small.

In the second case, an SQL driver is not a core component of Squeak.
And this is perhaps a point that I was not as clear about.  I was
primarily thinking of things that affect the community as a whole, or at
least a large subset of it.  Your example provides additional
functionality for a relatively small portion of the community.

In the end I think the value of your example is that the issue of
bounties probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis.

Ken

Ken Causey wrote:
> Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form.  I
> think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
> if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining.  What I mean is that a bounty
> is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
> in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
> the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
> development will falter.  At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
> in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
> to be that it kills the community.

+10. There is significant danger if money is thrown some way because
"Squeak ought to do X, Y, or Z" without sustained support in the community.

Personally, I think bounties work best if they are used in the context
of an existing support network. For example, I would think that a bounty
for, say, "making loading in Monticello faster" might work because there
is a community of MC developers/users out there, it's a small, tangible
(and easy to measure) improvement and it's (most importantly) not in the
critical path of anyone (if it doesn't get done, so what).

Contrary to which I'd think that a bounty for, say, "use Oracle instead
of an image for persistence" (apologies to those out there who think
this is a bad example; I'm trying to make one up here since those that
come to my mind might step on a few toes...) wouldn't work very well.
It's (probably) a big project, the community by and large hasn't shown
much interest in this area and once it's over it's not at all clear if
the result has any lasting effect (since it's not clear if there will be
maintainers for such a project).

> So what else can we do:
[... snip ...]
> Individually, we can 'lead from the front'. In other words, lead by
> doing and hope that a sufficient number of others follow our example.

Unfortunately, this is very hard for anyone who is looking at bounties
as a potential solution - because a bounty is (at least in our
community) a clear sign that says "I can't lead that process" (otherwise
why don't you?).

> In the need category:
[... snip ...]
> We can remind those that express a need that their need would most
> quickly be met if they participate in the development required.

Amen.

> Anything else, if effective, artificially move the community away from
> where it would have naturally gone, so it is very unlikely to be
> self-sustaining.  Otherwise, it's simply a waste, not having acheived
> anything.

Yes.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

On 18 mars 06, at 01:28, Andreas Raab wrote:

>
> Personally, I think bounties work best if they are used in the  
> context of an existing support network. For example, I would think  
> that a bounty for, say, "making loading in Monticello faster" might  
> work because there is a community of MC developers/users out there,  
> it's a small, tangible (and easy to measure) improvement and it's  
> (most importantly) not in the critical path of anyone (if it  
> doesn't get done, so what).

Exactly.
Here is a list of item
        improving squeaksource
        fixing scriptloading
        making MC loading faster and been better
        having a better OB faster integrated RB
        fixing the weakreference
        fixing the refresh
        curving MVC
        cleaning the image to use toolbuilder
        ...

are the kind of items we would like to see fixed.
So this would work.

Stef

Hi Stef -

I hope you're not too disappointed but personally I don't think that
this list is particularly well suited for applying bounties. Most of the
goals seem way to unspecific ("improving", "fixing", "making X better"
mean little without saying what to improve, fix, or make better) and
some of the tasks seem quite large and/or complex. But feel free to give
it a shot, your opinion is as good as mine (or perhaps better) in this
area. I'm actually kinda curious myself what (if anything ;-) might happen.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

stéphane ducasse wrote:

stéphane ducasse puso en su mail :

> cleaning the image to use toolbuilder
Could do a longer explain  ?



       
       
               
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On 18 mars 06, at 11:20, Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene wrote:

> stéphane ducasse puso en su mail :
>
>> cleaning the image to use toolbuilder
> Could do a longer explain  ?

Basically we should check the complete image and use the toolBuilder  
abtsraction instead of direct
UI usage.

Stef

I would have not expected something more positive from you.

Stef

On 18 mars 06, at 10:47, Andreas Raab wrote:

Andreas wrote:
 
 > Ken Causey wrote:
 > Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form.  I
> think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
> if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining.  What I mean is that a bounty
> is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
> in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
> the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
> development will falter.  At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
> in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
> to be that it kills the community.

>> +10. There is significant danger if money is thrown some way because
>> "Squeak ought to do X, Y, or Z" without sustained support in the community.

 I understand this in the context of using squeakfoundation funds for bounty..  because the community who contributed those assets have a vested interest in how they are used.
 
 But, for private interests, what's the difference between someone building something in Squeak with their own skills vs. their own money + someone elses skills.  In either case, its just a piece of "motivation" or energy toward an end that goes through Squeak.
 
 Who's to stop anyone from doing it and what is the threat to the community?  If some business manager wants to offer to pay someone to build an interface to Oracle is everyone suddenly going to feel extra-compelled to use Oracle?  I doubt it.  Everyone will continue to do what they're inclined to do, and I can't imagine a more natural driving force than that.
 
  - Chris
 

 >  Who's to stop anyone from doing it and what is the threat to the
 > community?  If some business manager wants to offer to pay someone
 > to build an interface to Oracle is everyone suddenly going to feel
 > extra-compelled to use Oracle?  I doubt it.

Of course not. That would simply be a job and there is absolutely
nothing wrong with it. But note that in such a case there are no preset
expectations, where (in my understanding) a bounty system is setting
expectations fairly directly (all the ones that I've seen allow you to
claim the bounty only after your work has been integrated in the
relevant domain). And that would be the main difference.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Chris Muller wrote:

Hi Stef -

Well, the good thing is it's *really* easy to prove me wrong. Just do
it. But I think you didn't read my previous message very carefully; I
actually pointed to a number of (what I think) important questions that
we need to ask ourselves (like: Is the scope well-defined? Can an
"average" squeaker do it or are there only three people in the world who
can solve that problem at all? Is there an existing support network? Is
this an issue that is of interest for a significant number of other
people to solve?) in which (at least by my counting; YMMV) many of your
tasks do not rank very highly which (again to me) makes them unlikely
candidates to work out in a bounty system. I just don't think that all
tasks are equally valid in a bounty system and much depends on why we
think a bounty system works at all.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

stéphane ducasse wrote:

Is "adding missing class comments" and "adding missing method
comments" too specific, too unspecific, not useful to most Squeak
developers, or requires a skill that only 3 developers possess? ;-)

Cheers,
Darius

Sure I read your email.
Sure we thought about that.
This is why we have been hesitating to the point of doing nothing.
Sure doing is more difficult because it involve failure while not  
doing is warm and sweet but death.

Stef

On 19 mars 06, at 23:00, Andreas Raab wrote: