[Qgis-developer] Bounty hunting procedure

[Tim Sutton]

Hi all

Further to the thread a while back relating to bounties for bugs, and
some offlist disucssions with Paolo, I have set up a custom 'tracker'
in the QGIS Desktop project on hub.qgis.org. I explain the proposed
procedures below. If the process is acceptible, we wll experimentally
issue a few bounties and see if it works in practice. As always
comments and feedback are welcome. A version of the notes below will
be added to CODING.pdf in the root of the source tree once thy are
finalised.

-------------------- DRAFT START -------------------------------

= Procedures for bounty based bug squashing in QGIS =

== For bounty sponsors ==

If you would like to sponsor the project by donating money to our
bounty pot the process is simple:

- Make a general donation towards the bug fixing effort using the
paypal link on the QGIS web site.
- Notify the project treasurer (Paolo Cavallini) that you donation is
to be used for the 'bounty pool'.
- Sit back and wait for bugs to be closed.
-

Notes:

- The exact bugs that will be fixed using your funding will be at the
discretion of project management.
- You can provide a list of bugs you would like to see included in the
bounty bug pool.
- Factor on between 15 and 50 euros per bug fix as a guideline for how
many bugs can be fixed with your donation.
- The project management will decide bounty values for individual
tickets based on their knowledge of the software and their percieved
complexity of the issue.
- The project management may at their discretion increase or decrease
the bounty value on any given issue over time.
- The bounty donation does not constitute any contract between parties
representing the QGIS project (project management, developers or
independent bug fixers) and yourself.
- The project management reserve the right to alter, reduce, substitue
etc. issues in the bounty programme based on current needs.
- The acceptance of an issue being closed will be made by project management.
- Should a ticket be closed by project management as a result of
efforts of a bounty hunter, a non refundable payment shall be made by
the project to the bounty hunter.
- When a ticket is closed, the obligations of the bug fixer shall be concluded.
- Should a closed ticket later be re-opened, a new bounty shall be
issued and the original payment of bounty shall be considered
irrelevant.
-

== For bounty managers ==

To manage bounties, you need to be approved as an administrator on the
redmine instance at http://hub.qgis.org
Taking into account the number of bounties that can reasonably issued
from the bounty fund, visit each issue to have a bounty and do:

```
Update -> Change Properties -> More
```

Then change the tracker type to 'Bounty' and assign a bounty value.


== For bounty hunters ==

- Ask an administrator to put you into the 'Bounty Hunter' role (you
need to have an existing account on http://hub.qgis.org).
- Go to http://hub.qgis.org and use the bounty query on the right of
the QGIS Desktop project page issues list
(http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/issues?query_id=14) to see
open bounties.
- Bounties are listed by monetary value in descending order
- When you see a ticket you would like to work on, change its status
to 'claimed for bounty' and set your name in the 'assigned to' list.
- Do not claim more than one issue at a time.
- When you have fixed the issue (and provided a unit test if it is in
core or gui), mark the ticket as 'Fixed for bounty'
- Wait for a project manager to verify the ticket is resolved.
- Payment will be made to you and the ticket will be closed by marking
it 'Bounty Paid'


----------------- DRAFT END ----------------------------------


I welcome contributions to the above document. Everything should be
set up in redmine for this - we just need to make some tests with real
tickets to see that the workflow goes as expected.

You will notice that I made no allowance for donators to 'contract' a
bounty on a specific bug. I think we will have an administrative
nightmare if we allow this - people who really want a specific bug
fixed should independently contact a developer and contract them to
fix it in my opinion.

Regards

Tim

-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
==============================================
Please do not email me off-list with technical
support questions. Using the lists will gain
more exposure for your issues and the knowledge
surrounding your issue will be shared with all.

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