[NewIdea]A new way to push ReactOS Development [NewIdea]

[vicmarcal]

Hi guys!

A new idea has appeared! and me as the Forum Spy in the ReactOS Board Team...I'm filtering it. Jkjk

A great new idea is suggested by Amine Khaldi. As you probably know, Amine was directly behind our GSoC preparations this year, creating a team to prepare for it, from ReactOS and his Haiku friends, and coordinating a nice effort that got us accepted this year after being rejected for 5 years before he took this... so he did a pretty good job. But well, you know the story for sure

Anyway: Now he has this new idea, that he got from his Haiku friends, and I think it could work btw... it's working quite well in Haiku.

The idea is simple: ReactOS Core Devs send "funding requests" to the ReactOS Foundation describing the work they are going to do, and how many hours they will work on it, and suggesting an amount for the hours they'll work on. These funding requests will be published.

Then the ReactOS Foundation looks into each request, talks with the dev, checks if it has the necessary funds, and then accepts/rejects the proposal, and the result is published.

It's not like CFI(that didn't work at all for Haiku and neither for us), but instead it's like a "GSoC" during the whole year...!

Do you imagine Devs working as they did in GSOC?
In 3 months we have: themes, font driver, networking and kmtests !
What could we expect if they work that way for the whole year?
Even more, that way we will know where our Donations are going in a much transparent way.

So what do you think about this idea ?
Do you think we (the community) are ready for this, like Haiku community ? Do you think we can make this a reality ?
Imo, we should be having doing this since years ago..but ey...never is late!

[acat1433]

I think it is a efficient way.

er, what about the Sponsorship money of the Russian President ?

Is there any exact information ?

[gonzoMD]

ReactOS allready tried a similar way, but this didn't work very well afaik.

Look here: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Community_Funded_Ideas

[EmuandCo]

There's no money from Russia. At least not yet.

Btw, niiice idea ^^ we won't have the same speed as in gsoc times, but it will be faster for sure.

[vicmarcal]

ReactOS allready tried a similar way, but this didn't work very well afaik.

Look here: http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Community_Funded_Ideas

Well,that was the CFI I talked about
But there are several differences:
The CFI didnt work for Haiku neither..
Differences:
1)CFI was trying to "push" several ideas forward at the same time.And that's not realistic, as you can see most of them didnt reach the minimun amount.
The "New way" will push one,two or three at the same time depending on the money donated.The
money is focused and not disgregated.
2)CFI was a mix of suggestions from the community,devs,etc.Also there are several CFIs assigned to a same dev. The new idea is that the own Devs will suggest where they are willing to work,and they have to work in just an idea at the same time.Focusing the development.
3)The CFI didnt have any control,anyone can suggest one and publish it.Now it would be the ReactOS foundation the one which will select the Best ideas to found.Focusing the development.
4)In the new idea there is implicit a compromise:A dev will work xxxx hours to reach xxx objectives for xxxx money.Much transparent,easier to track the evolution by the ReactOS community.

There are several other differences.But the main for me is that they select the objectives they want(so they are more motivated),that ReactOS Foundation decides to fund just the most interestings(it's impossible to fund 10 at the same time unless we have big donnors in our files) and that they got paid for xxx hours. These small differences are big enough. Haiku didnt suceed using CFI but they have been working for a couple of years this way and now they are releasing betas(iirc).They have improved lot,which has attracted new devs.You know,THE vicious circle

[hto]

What about another variant of CFI:

• devs propose a list of tasks;
• community chooses one or a few;
• collect donations;
• if a developer misses deadline, community decides whether to set a later deadline or to devote funds to another task;
• community assesses the quality of work — if ok, the dev receives money.

[vicmarcal]

What about another variant of CFI:

• devs propose a list of tasks;
• community chooses one or a few;
• collect donations;
• if a developer misses deadline, community decides whether to set a later deadline or to devote funds to another task;
• community assesses the quality of work — if ok, the dev receives money.

Community variable not defined and used in line 2
I mean,who or what is the Community?Any Forum users?even my grandma?
I like involving the Community in these decissions,the Foundation(I'm sure) will pick trying to make the community happy but also moving forward. For me Just the community or just the Foundation is not a good idea. There must be some Technical criteria too that maybe the Community doesn't have yet
Imo,after the "proposals" are sent, we should begin talking in the Forum about them,this way the Foundation will know the Community valoration and decide with that in mind.

[SomeGuy]

It actually occurred to me that I have not seen ReactOS pushing for donations recently.

What ReactOS needs are some PBS style fund raising telethons.

Personally I like the idea of having all of the donations go in to one pot and leave the decisions on what specifically needs to be funded up to the leadership. Much simpler for drive-by donators to deal with.

Of course with this economy... well, I'm surprised there is enough to pay the server bills.

[Aeneas]

@vicmarcal

A more "dictatorial" approach would be possible, too: the community being those who offer money to a goal.

You could do it this way: When you donate, you provide an e-mail address.

Each task has a deadline (a fixed calendar date, up to, say, 24:00 CET on that date). The developer can switch a task to "done" from its initial status "pending". If this switch has been undertaken, there may be some form of quality assurance and once approval has been confirmed, the bounty is paid out. Approval has to be made withing one calendar month from the status change; payment is to be performed within five bank business days in Berlin from the date of acceptance. That switch can be done only until the deadline; it can be retracted, too, but the term for completion is not "paused" (to prevent artificially extending the term by saying "it is done"-"no, it is not"-"ah, it is"...).

If, however, the status is not changed into "done" within the term set for the task, the donors receive an e-mail telling them that they are free to re-purpose their donation. This could be either the same bounty, with a later calendar date if so offered by the developer, or another bounty, or the project's general purposes. If once more a bounty is chosen, it is handled as above.

If no answer is received from the donor within one month after having issued a request for his decision, the money is seen as transformed into a donation for the project's general purposes.

This way, neither the donor feels "tricked" by putting in money into some task that seriously takes FOREVER, the respective developer feels both an inducement to finish on time, and the project has a clear overview what money is on what account for what purpose until what point in time.

(... and I might imagine that you start to correctly guess my profession... )

[fred02]

Then the ReactOS Foundation looks into each request, talks with the dev, checks if it has the necessary funds, and then accepts/rejects the proposal, and the result is published.

So what do you think about this idea ?

Sound plausible, but I was not aware that ROS foundation had any money at all.
Otherwise it is similar to FreeBSD fond, but they are much bigger.

er, what about the Sponsorship money of the Russian President ?

We should not put all the eggs in one basket, even if it materialises one day.

[FlyingIsFun1217]

The problem I see with a monetary-based incentive is that what happens to most of the normal dev commits? Won't the devs doing commits that they would have always normally just done, want compensation for it now?

Then you'd end up with every other developer holding back commits in hopes they can get paid for it. I wouldn't have a problem with this if there were the money (and a good way to make general donations, maybe linked from the home page), but as far as I know, and I may be wrong, the ROS foundation doesn't have much money.

FlyingIsFun1217

[vicmarcal]

Well, I am not concerned about Devs just working for money really.They have been working for ears totally free so the relationship is more like the father and the son. If some money motivates or helps them to see it as a "little job" or as a small reward because all this years of free work...Then,Perfect.

The most important thing,before moving to the details(thanks Aenas), is to know if we(the community) will be able to donate some money to push the idea forward.As you perfectly said the Fundation has almost Zero(it was 5 years or so since the latest Fundraising).
So...guys..the picky thing is:
Can you (community) start donating as much as possible, to allow us to start funding devs with such contracts ?
Are you as noble as the Haiku community, who keeps donating and donating, and as a result the Haiku development is accelerated ?
Are you going to help this by starting to donate and to spread the word so that any one else you know can donate(in case you dont have coins in your pockets) ?
These are the picky questions we have to face now
I still think the same,5-10 dollars once is nothing but a lot of 5 dollars donnors means ReactOS progress!

[Black_Fox]

The idea of GSOC-like projects is very neat and usable. This could be nicely combined with the fundraiser goal. Let's set a goal for getting the money that one (or more) project requires, put a nice gauge/progressbar about it on the homepage and someone might as well help because of the increased visibility that money are needed
I could donate €20 for such project fundraiser

[YurijVodkin]

put a nice gauge/progressbar about it on the homepage

Good idea

[DOSGuy]

put a nice gauge/progressbar about it on the homepage

Good idea

Definitely a good idea, though it's complicated by the fact that donations are accepted in two currencies.

Donations have been declining since 2008. I just compiled the donation data from the Donors' page. The Euro has fluctuated a lot versus the US dollar in the last few years, so for simplicity, I've treated both currencies as equal.

Code: Select all

       Total   Donors  Per donor
2011   1554.59    83   18.73
2010   1919.00    94   20.41
2009   2669.17   142   18.80
2008   3471.11   126   27.55
2007   2759.57   118   23.39

At this point in the year, we're on track to have about 1962 currency units of donations by 104 people. Note also that the amount donated per person has declined since the 2008 peak. I can probably throw as much $1000 into the campaign this year, and I'll use my resources to send as many people your way as I can.