[Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Erik Moeller]

2009/1/9 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>:
> 800,000 / 30,000 = 26. Is that not a fair wage? If the Foundation only plans
> to hire three developers to work on this project then it must be spending
> the money on something else entirely.

First of all, we're hiring three people because we already have two.
We've hired Naoko, and we will allocate Trevor full-time to the
project.

Secondly, base salaries if we hire locally (which we do, in this
case), are obviously much higher. See payscale.com and other sites to
get an idea of salaries in various parts of the world. That does not
include recruitment, benefits, equipment, office space and supplies,
staff development and travel, administrative overhead such as payroll,
etc. Plus the other costs we've budgeted, such as research costs for
usability tests, allocation of experienced on-staff developers to
support the project, etc.

Thirdly, if you were to hire remotely at lower salaries, you'd simply
incur much of the cost you'd save in salaries in other ways,
especially management, oversight, and travel. This is especially true
for a project of this complexity where you're not just handing some
set of specs over to an outsourcing firm. (You of all people,
advocating for a complex tool like Semantic MediaWiki, should
appreciate that.)

There are isolated projects that can be managed well by giving them to
experienced remote developers. For a project of this scope, complexity
and importance, I believe it's critical to have a local team that can
fully focus on the project and collaborate with the core staff in San
Francisco on an as-needed basis.
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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