My assumption is that the recipient didn’t solicit you for the donation, but I’m not sure it would matter if he had. I don’t remember anyone being required to submit a I’ll do this if you give me the check. statement.
I don’t have a Do this if someone gives me a big check list and suspect that I might just stick the money in the bank too. Seems prudent to me. There might be a point where that money is needed - if advertising or donations fall, then the cash will be there to take care of the hosting needs. Or maybe six months from now, there will be a need for the funds for another reason. It’ll be there when that reason comes up.
Not sure why this is a big deal - you did specify that there weren’t any strings attached, right? I find it interesting that you are crushingly disappointed because the guy hasn’t spent the money yet… is it burning a hole in your pocket? Obviously it isn’t burning one in his.
Through open source enthusiasts are mostly developers, there must be some people in the community who are lawyers, buissinessmen, marketers, etc. Could it become standard for open source projects to have one guy like that onboard too just to help do things like this (ie investment) with their time-donation?
Please note: Open Source means just that - open, publicly-available source code. Nowhere is it written that just because code is written in .NET that it is not open source.
Hi Jeff!
I’m a VB.net developer, but I started my web developing with PHP as there’s no free ASP.net server. So now (after a year) I bought a PHP hosting and not a ASP.net one, because I become PHP Pro. So I think the first think is to make available a free ASP.net hosting for beginners. it won’t costs a lot (i think so) but will help many people and startups.
Hi Jeff!
I’m a VB.net developer, but I started my web developing with PHP as there’s no free ASP.net server. So now (after a year) I bought a PHP hosting and not a ASP.net one, because I become PHP Pro. So I think the first think is to make available a free ASP.net hosting for beginners. it won’t costs a lot (i think so) but will help many people and startups.
BTWN I got the following error on my first post for the comment
I have read halfway through the comments. I’ll digest them all later so sorry if this have been said before.
I agree that opensource project need time and not money. But money can ‘buy’ time. The team could use the money on tools. Better IDE’s could increase productivity. throw a party for the team, while may seem like useless improves morale and is especially usefull for old projects where the devs are burnt out and commitment maybe wavering. A good chair or new egonomic keyboards for all coders can improve productivity more than another software engineering book.
There are so many ways that the project can benefit without spending money directly on it. At the end of the day the project is the people. You spend the money on the people then you can;t be wrong.
Spending on advertising is not too important i think. I believe that the current OSS scene is strong enough that any good project will get the attention it deserve.
What are the three biggest recurring knocks against OSS and at the same time the things that nobody seems to want to donate to?
DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION.
If the $5K could be used to assist either ScrewTurn WIKI or anything else in producing quality documentation, tutorials, or other valuable non-code artifacts, then that seems to me to be the thing most worth doing: spend the $$$ for things that you CANNOT get contributors to volunteer time to accomplish.
Continuous integration server, unless they already have one.
Other machines to test on: low end, high end hardware, different OS versions, patchlevels, etc.
Mini conference: usually generates lots of coding activity, new sub-projects, etc.
You had a blog entry about fighter jets and fast turnarounds: upgrades to existing hardware for that purpose.
Commercial development tools, for QA, tests with different compilers, bug spotting. 5k might not go far.
But it’s always easier to tell someone else how to spend ths money, strangely…
So, I think your experiment revealed a problem in how you approached the problem (which is sort of the point of an experiment, I guess).
In a lot of companies you have at least one business guy that handles lots of non-programming tasks so that the devs can just develop the product. You know, like getting office space, taking care of payroll, lining up sales, taking care of the website, buying pizza during crunch time, authorizing new purchases, etc, etc.
It appears that this organization has no such person. It’s technical leadership for a technical project.
If you want to get the $5K used well, the easiest way is to find a good use, then briefly take that management role. If they need a designer, find one, hire him, and manage him to improve the design. If they need computers, find out what specs they need and take care of the transaction. If they want to have a f2f meeting/party/sprint of the major devs, figure out their schedules, find a good deal on accommodations and travel, and organize an agenda. If an intern is the best idea, find one, find a bite-sized task, set up interviews, and hire him.
This group apparently has lots of technical leadership, but having them organize any of those things would take the best programmer away from programming. They need an administrator to contribute time.
Many OSS groups have management/administration (Mozilla is a good example), and these can take advantage of donations better than smaller groups can.
If some people in the development team have other jobs and developing Screwturn in their spare times, they can take a non-paid break from their jobs for the total of days that money can cover concentrate on the project at that period.
You admirably donate money to one project, which appears to be unable to easily use the money for legal reasons, and you therefore infer that donating to all open-source projects is a lost cause? Perhaps the $5000 could buy a larger sample space?
delete the two last ones!