[Qgis-psc] Thoughts

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Nyall,

Thanks for your thoughts. This is also my impression.

I can second that. For every paid hour that someone works on QGIS 
(ideally 100% of work time), we get a lot of additional unpaid hours 
back for the project.

Without that possibility to work focused on some bug fixing or 
improvement, without having to worry if I have butter on my bread the 
next day, people wouldn't work on the hard things in QGIS.

The result is, that QGIS improves more quickly than with voluntary work 
only.

Even if some people feel uncomfortable with the fact, that some work on 
QGIS is paid for (btw: I think it has been like this already for many 
years in the past, so I don't think there is anything new in this 
respect), I think that the paid work does a lot more blessing to the 
project than what it potentially is harming the community.

Greetings,

Andreas

Am 31.03.19 um 10:49 schrieb 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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