[Foundation-l] Developer poll results

[Erik Moeller]

Anthere-

thanks for taking the time to poll the developers and summarize their  
opinions. It looks like it was a lot of work.

I think almost all of us agree that a developer conference/meetup would be  
a good idea. It could be expensive but also quite efficient. It has been  
suggested, for example, to have a meetup at the CCC Chaos Communication  
Congress (21C3) in Berlin this year:
http://www.ccc.de/congress/2004/

It seems to me that it would be a good idea to make this a general  
conference for developers working on wiki technologies, as this is a quite  
large and growing field with a huge need for standardization, but we as  
Wikimedia would of course only reimburse developers working on MediaWiki.  
I've created a short stub that can be developed further by interested  
parties:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiDevCon

The developers of TikiWiki (a popular wiki engine) meet regularly in so- 
called TikiFests already:
http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=TikiFest

Maybe we can coordinate with them and other makers of wiki engines.  
There's a general #wiki channel on irc.freenode.net where developers  
working on different engines hang out.

> Second, money in exchange of tasks. This would be
> money directly paid by the Foundation to thank some
> developers for their work.
> The board is willing to give it a try.

I presume that means you, Angela and Jimbo agree. Have you also talked to  
Michael and Tim? Are they involved in these meetings?

What amount of money do you anticipate can be allocated for this trial  
period, if we proceed further on this?

I would suggest a setup wherein a team (committee) of two or three people  
within Wikimedia who
a) do *not* want to be reimbursed for development work
b) have a solid technical understanding
decide upon tasks which they consider to be of high priority to the  
foundation. Developers can *propose* tasks to this team through a defined  
process (e.g. mailing list or board).

I would then suggest that the current page "Development tasks" on Meta  
(which is presently somewhat redundant with the roadmap) be turned into an  
official Wikimedia page, where only the aforementioned team can put up  
tasks, and any developer can then state:
- when they can start working on the task
- how long they believe they will need to finish the task
- under which conditions (for free/contract/etc.) they would be willing to  
complete the task.

The committee could immediately *decline* certain offers, but they would  
have to wait at least about 7 days before accepting an offer for any  
particular task, so that all developers have a chance to volunteer.

Money is paid depending on the conditions which the developers and the  
committee agree on. Validation may in some cases occur in stages, but  
again, this depends on the individual committee/developer relationship.

Is this general process agreeable to you?

Regards,

Erik