[Qgis-psc] Thoughts

[Nyall Dawson]

(oops - did a  rookie mistake and only sent my reply to Paolo! sorry!)

Ok, here's my 2c: <to be read in a thoughtful, debating voice, not an
angry one!>

I think this supposed division between volunteer vs paid community is
not at all reflective of reality, and if anything, veers dangerously
close to insulting the hard working developers in our community.
Here's why: I don't know of a single QGIS developer whose only
contributions to the project are paid ones. Without exception, every
developer who is being paid to work on QGIS is also contributing HUGE
amounts of volunteer time to the project (in code, PR reviews, bug
triaging, documentation, etc). From my experience, even among those
who are employed full time to work on QGIS and QGIS related stuff, the
ratio of individual paid:volunteer work has got to be (conservatively)
something like 1:3. Sometimes I suspect this ratio creeps up to closer
to 1:6.

Think about that number. For every hour of paid work our developers
are doing for the project, they're contributing about 3 hours of
volunteer development (or non-development) time. (** based on my
experience. If anyone disagrees, speak up). I personally do not
believe that there's a single "leech" within the active QGIS community
whose only contributions are paid ones.

There is still a HUGE amount of volunteer development done on QGIS.
Let's take QGIS 3.0 for example. The port from Qt4 - Qt5 was 1000's
hours of tedious, boring work. Was anyone paid directly for this? I'm
not aware of anyone. Who did the bulk of the work? A handful of
developers who are staff employed by QGIS support development
companies (or self-employed in these companies). Python 3? Same story.

Paid work on QGIS is the ONLY thing which enables developers to donate
the massive amounts of time required to keep the code alive and
healthy.

Here's the other point I want to raise: for better or worse, money is
society's way of getting people to do jobs they wouldn't otherwise do.
QGIS isn't exempt from this, and if there's work which needs doing,
but no-one wants to do it voluntarily.... money is the answer.

For example: I'm currently being sponsored by the ICSM to upgrade
QGIS' projection support to proj v6, and fix a bunch of related
shortcomings in QGIS. This isn't fun work. I wouldn't be doing it on
the weekend. I wouldn't donate my time to do this. If I wasn't being
paid, I'd be sitting back and waiting for someone else to do this
difficult task. But I'm being paid, so it's getting done. That's a win
for all of us.

Now, for a long time our MacOS users have been wanting a better QGIS
experience. The existing installation methods worked OK for a time,
but things changed in the MacOS operating system, and people's
expectations of a QGIS MacOS installer have changed as a result. This
isn't a new issue - It's been at least 2 or more years where I've been
seeing substantial user angst from that part of our community and
demand/requests for a modern installer. Unfortunately, this didn't
happen. No one volunteered to fix the situation. No one was interested
in donating their time to build a new installer. So to me - this is
EXACTLY what the QGIS sponsorship funds should be made available for.
Boring, tedious work which our users want or need, and which no-one
has stepped up to do as volunteer.

So back to Paolo's original question: I don't think this situation is
something the project or it's leadership can control. QGIS has shifted
from a hobby project to a serious professional organisation, and
that's entirely been driven by the demands and needs of our users. We
shouldn't fight this or try to hold too tightly to how things were in
the past, because again, it's not something we CAN control. What we
can/must do is guide the QGIS community through these periods of
transition, and adapt the project structure and community to the
external environment we exist in and the constraints it places on the
community.

There's one last thing I want to add. There's many reasons to
contribute to an open source community like QGIS. Having fun,
contributing to something greater which benefits humanity and our
planet, interesting mental stimulation (and, on a good day, getting
paid!). There's also one motivation which makes me nervous, and that's
contributing for the desire for kudos or personal validation. I think
that contributing for the goal of receiving recognition or acclaim is
linked to an unhealthy feeling of "ownership" over contributions.
That's a dangerous path -- because it's the nature of our game that
every line of code (or other stuff) contributed to the project will
eventually be ripped up and replaced by someone else in future! If we
become too attached to individual contributions we've personally made,
then it can be incredibly hurtful when this happens to those
contributions.

Instead I think the healthy mental state to have is to be continually
reminded that we are ALL "standing on the shoulders of giants". Every
contribution to the QGIS community, regardless of how large or small,
and regardless of whether someone comes along and redoes all your work
a day later, has helped shape future contributions and increased the
"height" we all stand at! If someone comes along and rewrites a bit of
code making it 100x faster, that's no reflection on the original
contributor's code -- because without that existing code, it's quite
likely there wouldn't be anything for the new contributor to improve
upon!

So, personally, I'd like to see us all take a step back whenever we
are taking too much ownership on individual contributions and instead
seek motivation and gratification at the quality of the end product,
and take ownership and pride in QGIS as a whole (both the software and
the community) instead.

Because boy, this whole community has a lot to be f***ing proud of! ;)

On Wed, 27 Mar 2019 at 16:44, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> I'm approaching my first year as Chair, I feel it's the time for me to
> raise the head from everyday tasks, and try to draw a more general
> picture of where the project is heading.
> One of the greatest strengths of our project is, in my view, the
> diversity of interests and approaches among us. Choices and trends come
> from the composition of all different priorities, without anyone taking
> the lead at thee disadvantage of others, and this give us much strength.
> As such, it is often difficult to understand where are we heading to,
> because of the lack of strong central decisions. As PSC member, I see we
> are usually busy dealing with day to day activities, and seldom we talk
> and thing in a bigger perspective.
> Nevertheless, changes do occur, and trends emerge. To me it is very
> interesting to put these into perspective, and I hope the same will be
> for you.
> Among these, I see two lines that are to me particularly evident:
> * the increasing number and importance of proprietary tools and
> services; in the good old days I think we used 100% free software; today
> this would be very difficult
> * the shift from a volunteer-only association, in which who is
> interested in something just does it, to a company-style group, where
> people are paid for providing services.
> To be very clear, as Chair I do not judge these as problems, and I'm
> happy whatever direction the community will take for the good of our
> project (of course, as everybody knows, I have my personal preferences
> and priorities).
> We are steadily growing stronger and bigger, and some of these changes
> might genuinely be unavoidable in the process, or it is just a shift in
> overall mentality and expectations. Whichever way, this may be good for
> the project, and I certainly do not oppose it a priori.
> What makes me uncomfortable though, and prompted me to write this note,
> is seeing these changes to creep in, probably unnoticed by many in the
> community, through a myriad of small, apparently minor, day to day
> decisions. I can't tell how many of us are really happy of these trends,
> how many are unhappy, and whether some important contributor is put away
> by the changes, or rather by the too slow pace of it.
> We have to be especially careful because companies, smaller and larger,
> are a powerful engine driving us towards a better code, a faster
> development rate, and better overall quality. On the other hand, we are
> dependent on the volunteer work by countless individuals and
> organizations; our budget does not allow us, and will not allow us in
> the foreseeable future, to replace all the volunteer work with paid
> personnel, so it is in our best interest to balance the needs of these
> two components.
> I have two aims writing this:
> * raise an open discussion on these points, to better cooperatively
> understand what are the priorities, the feelings and the aspirations of
> the community
> * reach a consensus on our mission, drawing guidelines or a social
> contract à la Debian, or some other tool that could make everybody more
> happy at least in average.
> I'm fully aware this is a potentially disruptive topic, but a thoughtful
> discussion could lead us towards a stronger, more united community.
> Sorry for being long.
> All best wishes.
> --
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS.ORG Chair:
> http://planet.qgis.org/planet/user/28/tag/qgis%20board/
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