Brion Vibber wrote:
Timwi wrote:
There is nothing wrong with wanting to centrally organise these offers, nor is there anything wrong with allowing the community some say over what the Wikimedia Foundation itself should offer.
Wake me when the discussion becomes substantive rather than speculative.
I think it necessarily has to be somewhat in the subjunctive - "if the Foundation were to spend money on software development, how should it go about that?" Right now the discussion is like a bunch of staffers in the West Wing kicking around ideas, looking for something good enough to take to the boss.
One thing that I think people have danced around is who's motivated by what. If someone can't afford to do a piece of work for free, but will do a great job for $500, they're not being evil or immoral; that person has just put a price tag on their time. It's then up to the Foundation to decide whether it wants the work badly enough to pay up, or to wait for somebody to donate their time.
It seems like it would be easy enough for the Foundation to put up a list of wanted features with approximations to how much they're willing to pay. The harder part is to negotiate for the work; the more-capable people might charge more, but going cheaper could result in an encyclopedia trashed by bad coding. But fundamentally it's the same process as negotiating for hardware.
Stan