[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> I'll believe it when I see it.

;-)

> AFAICT, the dumps still don't work, and you
> still haven't hired a new CTO.

Dumps work better, and there's work done to get a new CTO.

> 1.7

How was that budgeted? Which year? Can you point me at that unspent  
software development budget number?

> The first step in fixing a problem is identifying the faults.

Ones known already?

> The CTO came up with a budget.  He submitted that budget.  That  
> budget was
> accepted.  Then the money which was budgeted went unspent, while  
> glaring
> problems which required spending remained.

You know who'd do better job? I guess WMF would welcome referrals :)

> It's not a matter of motivation, it's a matter of reality.  If  
> you're going
> to limit your selection to people who are independently wealthy,  
> you're not
> going to get as many qualified individuals for the task.

Well, apparently there are people on payroll - so we're not limiting.
On the other hand, can we afford proper .com-level salaries to  
qualified engineers?
Even though there's recession, there's always need for good engineers.

> If there are
> people willing and able to fix the dumps for free, and you can find  
> them and
> give them the tools they need to do it, fine.  But that didn't  
> happen, and
> *in this particular case*, it's probably unrealistic.

Indeed, because this isn't project that is really attractive or  
rewarding technology-wise.
For now we got lots of things done because stuff we did was interesting.

> Three years ago, before the economy went into the crapper,
> you probably could have found someone to do it.
> I probably would have even done it myself, if someone had
> given me access to the servers so I could do it.

One doesn't really need access to servers to fix the code. Well,  
eventually one may need, but that is quite beyond the whole  
implementation.

>  What I remember from the
> time is that the story was always "this is being worked on", not "we  
> need
> someone to volunteer to redesign this".

Depends whom you were talking to, or maybe they were mistaken about  
the project, or maybe they were mistaken about themselves committing  
to it :)

> Actually I was under the impression
> then that you didn't really want to fix the dumps - remember this  
> was during
> the beginning of the oversight days.

How is that any related?

>  But today it's probably tougher
> finding qualified individuals willing and able to do it for free.

I wouldn't be that sure. It was always tough to find anyone  
experienced enough.

> Whatever.  Whether it's done for free or for a price isn't what's  
> important.
> What's important is that it gets done.

It gets done. It is being done.

> Have any of these people fixed the dumps?

In a way, everyone did, just probably not enough for your absolute  
benchmark.
Still, all these people volunteered to do great things, requiring more  
work than dumps.
My point is that we can find volunteers for really challenging in- 
depth projects, it gets a bit more difficult if the project in  
question does not provide too much motivation.

>  Maybe if the current system
> wasn't written in Python you could have found someone to do this,  
> but as it
> was, it simply wasn't a task which anyone was motivated to do for  
> free.

LOL, replace 'Python' with pretty much any other language, and you can  
use it again.

> "Let's just wait a few years and see if someone turns up" isn't the  
> answer
> to that problem.  "Let's spend a little of this 1.7 million we have  
> sitting
> in a bank account doing nothing" is.

You are trolling and you're piggy-backing.
We have dedicated resources for that, paid out of donations, yes.

Is repeating yourself these things over and over something you're  
doing to try to support yourself as original author of these ideas?

Cheers,
Domas