[Foundation-l] "wiki (usability) summer" - like google summer of code?

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> GSoC has never produced anything useful for us, so I don't know why you
> think it would be a good model.

But it has produced useful results for a number of other open source
software communities, so I don't think it's prudent to kick the idea
out the window just yet. What's needed to make a system like GSoC work
is to have a large team of prospective mentors, effort to integrate
the volunteers into the community, etc. I've seen other groups who
have been very successful from this program, adding a large portion of
students as active committers after the program is over. If MediaWiki
hasn't been as successful, it might be worthwhile figuring out what is
being done differently from those projects which are more successful.

> The idea of a collection of remote workers paid by the line of code might
> sound nice to an online community member, but I'm beginning to think that
> it's risky at best. A software development team working in an office
> together might be old-school, but at least the management practices are
> established, with good results commonly produced.

I've heard the idea of code bounties discussed before, maybe that's a
model that's worth reconsidering. Take your existing development staff
and ancillary contributors and offer firm cash rewards for specific
features. Ideally new contributors will join the effort in pursuit of
these rewards. Again, something to consider.

--Andrew Whitwoth