[Qgis-psc] Thoughts

[Nyall Dawson]

On Mon, 1 Apr 2019 at 04:17, Richard Duivenvoorde <rdmailings at duif.net> wrote:
>
> The 'community', both developers, and users and volunteers need each
> other to keep being a nice community. We all should respect each others
> actions, goals, values and reasons to contribute. But also try to keep
> the community together as a whole. Volunteers/users profit from the paid
> developers work, the other way around the paid developers profit (and
> CAN make money) with all the work done by earlier contributors.
>
> But I think we need to address the fact that we started as a 100%
> volunteer organisation and now move to a (volunteer) organisation 'with
> money'.... In my vision we (as QGIS community) should NOT try to
> work/think like an enterprise. It is not clear to me how to mix these
> two though, but maybe I'm old fashioned.

Yep, 100% agree. That's one big issue in the QGIS community now, how
to keep volunteers motivated and new contributors welcome in the
increasingly complex and time demanding environment which QGIS has (by
necessity) evolved into. That's also why we 100% need strong
non-core-developer, non-organisational-affiliated representation on
the steering committee.... so that with their viewpoints and guidance
the project can be "steered" effectively through this transition.
(again, I'd argue we cannot/should not block the changing environment,
that's not anything the project itself can control.).

> We could try to write down some kind of vision/values/whatever where all
> of us try to adhere to? It should be short and clear, so whenever
> tensions arises, it can be used to discuss?

Sounds like a good start! We do have the existing guidelines new core
developers agree to when they get given git commit rights, but we need
something which applies outside the core developer space too. (Those
guidelines also could do with a refresh anyway)

> PS not sure what/who you have in mind with "the desire for kudos or
> personal validation" but I think it as confronting as saying "people
> introducing bugs to get paid to fix them". Let's respect each others
> reasons to contribute, even if it is to get kudos.

Right, but I think you missed my argument there. My warning was
against strong personal attachment to individual contributions (which
I think can be a direct outcome of the kudos motivation). So yes,
often the desire for personal kudos is a good motivation, but I
strongly believe that attachment to the original form of contributions
is never a healthy thing. And for reference, I've come up with this
belief through many hours of personal soul-searching and
internal/external debate about what it takes to survive in this
open-source world without burn out. It's a conclusion based on my
personal struggles. I'll be the first to admit I've a giant plank in
my own eye here and have struggled with this in the past/present, and
it's a philosophy I continually need to remind myself about when I
start to get burnt out.

Nyall




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