Re: [gentoo-project] Fundraising for incremental service level

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 3:00 AM Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote:
>
> So I think we can, somewhat, get away from this framing. Just get the community to pitch N projects and rank them. Offhand I can think of a few:
>  - Replace portage with pkgcore.
>  - pkgcore maintainer (replace radhermit; who has been asking for help for months)
>  - build a package-build service that is easy to deploy.
>  - More performance work on portage.
>  - Rewrite catalyst.
>  - Replace repoman with pkgcheck.
>  - Compile repo format into something less terrible then we have today.
>  - Replace rsync mirror network with GIT https serving.
>  - Help arzano build more developer tools on top of p.g.o
>

Again, not intended as criticism, but as one other thing to think
about and maybe add to this list.

Some of these changes are purely back-end and don't impact dev workflow much.

Some of these changes will or could impact dev workflow.  You need to
include in these projects the efforts to get the rest of the devs
trained/transitioned over to the new way of doing things.

Right now big changes don't happen very often, so we don't really need
to worry about this stuff.  If you start commissioning "more developer
tools" or "replace repoman with pkcheck" and so-on, then you need to
consider that this change impacts the volunteer devs who aren't
getting paid to keep up with all the changes.

How many GSOC projects have come out with some new tool and maybe 5%
of the devs use it?  Often this is because the tool was built, a short
article was written on a blog (maybe), and that was the end of it.  We
already have lots of tools that I bet 80% of devs don't use to their
potential.  They have a workflow that sort-of works and they don't
spend much time on Gentoo, and in general when we build new tools the
docs are pretty minimal, or are more focused around reference than
workflow.

So, if you're going to start commissioning changes you'll want to be
careful that the unpaid volunteers don't fall behind.  I've seen
non-profits do stuff like this and it rapidly segments the org into
the 5% of the org that schedules all their meetings M-F 9-5, and the
95% unpaid volunteers who become disconnected from all the
decision-making and become less involved.  The org then backfills
their work by hiring more.  It initially works because 1 employee
probably can do the work of 20 volunteers, but then 95% of the
community basically gets relegated to just paying the bills.  The
crisis happens when the 95% start feeling uninvolved enough that they
STOP paying the bills, and then the whole organization collapses.  The
95% don't stop paying the bills out of resentment - just disinterest.
People care more about an org if they actually directly contribute to
it.

I do think it is important to not lose sight of letting the community
directly contribute.  It helps keep the leadership grounded in what
the community wants, and it keeps the community around.

Again, this isn't a reason to never spend money.  You just have to
make sure that every time you're spending $1 on some new bit of
tooling, you're spending another $1 on keeping everybody else involved
in it.  That isn't wasted money - it is the cost of staying relevant.

-- 
Rich