Facebook puts more bounties on dlang issues

Manu turkeyman at gmail.com
Sat Jan 11 20:46:26 PST 2014


On 12 January 2014 14:16, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org
> wrote:

> On 1/11/14 7:16 PM, Brian Schott wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, 12 January 2014 at 02:04:38 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Anyway, just some thoughts.
>>>
>>
>> I agree with most of this. I'm spending some of my free time working on
>> some code that helps D development in general but has no bounty on it.
>>
>
> Yah, it's a weird valley to climb out from. The famous original experiment
> on cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)
> had people paid more rate a task more negatively.
>
> My hope is to convince that the message Facebook is conveying here is much
> stronger than the actual sums involved; it's an initiation of cooperation
> and involvement with a community, and it would be awesome to respond in
> kind.
>
> Walter and I chose the bugs and sums involved. The sums were assigned so
> as to not create animosity;


I can certainly appreciate that, and it is a delicate issue, but it really
depends how it's framed.
For instance, if facebook has a vested interest in D (or any technology),
and they need some work done, it's common business practise to hire a
contractor and get it done.
Companies do this all the time for many reasons. If facebook were to hire a
contractor lets say, to do some work on any open-source project, it would
follow that the work, while being done in facebook's interest, is then
contributed back to the project.
This happens in OSS all the time, and it doesn't usually create animosity.
I would imagine (although I have no evidence to draw from) that most
communities would appreciate the paid contributions to the code regardless
of who they paid to do it. What really pisses the community off is when a
businesses hires a contractor to do some work and then DOESN'T commit their
changes back to the mainline.
In a sense, what you're doing here is not just hiring some contractor, but
you're giving everyone in the community an equal opportunity to take the
job.

The criteria required to keep a respectable summed bounty impersonal, is
that the task must be in facebook's own business interest. I don't think
people in the D community can reasonably take issue past that, and the fact
that everyone has an equal opportunity to accept the contract is in some
ways a nice bonus.

Perhaps you should do a poll, and see what the average sentiment on this
matter is?
I think most people understand that when a technology becomes backed by a
large influential company, it turns out being good for the whole community.

Google and Apple both made their fortunes leveraging OSS technology... I
wonder how many people in the OSS communities that they leverage are pissed
off about it? Are there stories of this sort? I haven't heard any.

if I'd assigned $1000 on some bug and someone else has worked or had just
> done a more difficult and important bug, there would be tension. The
> current sums are nice perks for people who'd be interested in pushing D
> forward anyway. And I'm telling you: doing great on bountied bugs is one
> pretty darn good way to push it forward.


Sure, and it is a nice perk, but your comment seemed to be that it hasn't
motivated the action you were hoping for from a business interest point of
view?

 To work on a bug that has a bounty I'd have to:
>> 1) Get up to speed on something that didn't immediately interest me
>> 2) NOT do what did interest me
>>
>> In the SF bay area, $50 is not a lot of money. It's maybe enough to pay
>> the bill for dinner + tip for two people, or enough to fill a small
>> car's gasoline tank.
>>
>
> Whoa, wait a minute. You live around here? Let's meet! Will send you email.
>
>
>  These bounties just seem to be bonuses for people who were going to work
>> on those bugs anyways.
>>
>
> YES. But that's just the beginning!
>
>
> Andrei
>
>
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