[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Anthony]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > 1.7
>
> How was that budgeted? Which year? Can you point me at that unspent
> software development budget number?
>

http://blog.p2pedia.org/2008/06/foundation-who-cried-wolf.html

Correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I can gather: Total spending was
$1.7 million less than budgeted.  Tech spending was $1.7 million less than
budgeted.  And $1.7 million was sitting in the bank accounts at the end of
the fiscal year.

> 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?
>

The solution to not being able to afford "proper .com-level salaries" is to
offer people nothing?

I'll fix the dumps for minimum wage plus daycare for my two kids.


> > 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.
>

I don't know about that.  It's a pretty cool problem, it's just a difficult
one to solve.  Or maybe it's a cool problem because it's difficult to solve.


> > 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.
>

It would certainly help.  The problem with the dumps is that they're so
huge.  Not being able to test solutions on a system just as huge is a
serious constraint.  Plus you have to remember that the WMF's particular
installation is not the common one.  There's probably enough information out
there to pretty much replicate it, but that's another serious constraint.
 I'm certainly not willing to deal with those unnecessary constraints.

> 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?
>

It was the existence of the history dumps that enabled Judd and I to find
the oversighted SlimVirgin edits.


> > 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.
>

Once again, I've heard that for three years now, so forgive me for not
believing it until I see it.