Re: [Geotools-admin] new blood - bribery

[Jody G. <jod...@gm...>]

On Tuesday, 10 May 2011 at 7:02 PM, Andrea Aime wrote:
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Jody Garnett <jod...@gm...> wrote:
> > The answer was bribery. E.g. someone serving on the Society's council for a
> > year had their membership fees
> > waived. Members responding to a call for assistance or advice went into the
> > draw for a free book.
> > 
> > In the context of GeoTools it would be good to think of inducements that can
> > be offered to module maintainers and PMC members. Even token
> > items such as a profile page on the web site might attract people (and it
> > would be better than the current invisibility).
> > 
> > Good thinking; our earlier draft of the website had such information; and
> > indeed we collected information on who uses GeoTools as well.
> > So we could start by:
> > - restoring that content to the "get involved page" (or about page?)
> > - We have something tasteful on the uDig site; listing the current PSC
> > (http://udig.refractions.net/developers/) I think we could list those
> > responsible for the supported modules?
> > - With respect to organisations we could list those donating resources to
> > the project (build boxes; PMC members; module maintainers, etc ...); and
> > have a link to other commercial support offerings at the bottom. The uDig
> > version of this page is here (http://udig.refractions.net/users/ for
> > reference)
> > - we could hold of listing users in trade for a white paper / case-study /
> > blog post describing how the organisation uses GeoTools
> All of the above could work in some way I guess.
> 
> Another thing that came to mind is the ultimate form of bribery: bug fixing.
> That is, I'm certainly more inclined to help users that try to answer questions
> on the user list, help with documentation, provide ready to try out bug reports
> (data + little self contained program) than people just crying for help.
> Just not sure how to word it, it's not like we can promise to fix a specific
> bug within a specific time, but I guess people often don't realize they can
> help in other ways (write a tutorial, something).
I have a similar thought; the way I phrase it is that I will work on the bug if they will promptly test (or join me on IRC and try several things out). The difference in efficiency is great; as they already have an environment that produces the problem. Where as if I need to spend 30 mins (or install oracle?) to produce a 10 min fix it is not going to happen.

I had asked people to write up the answer in the wiki; but in porting the content I really did not find that many of these requests had be honoured. 

Jody