[Qgis-psc] Developer roles

Tue Sep 8 01:22:30 PDT 2020

On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 5:33 PM Régis Haubourg
<regis.haubourg at oslandia.com> wrote:
>
> Hi PSC,
>
> this discussion stalled during summer, I would like to be clear about what has been decided in the end as the next paid bugfixing period - which starts within 4 days.
>
> Is it clear who is eligible in the end to submit paid bugfixing program ?
>
> Best regards
>
> Régis
>

Hi Régis, I missed the last PSC meeting so there might be news I'm not aware of.

Now, speaking as a core developer/community member and not as a PSC
member (so, this is NOT of course an official PSC position) I must say
we definitely need to set some rules for who is in the list of paid
bug fixing and that I mostly agree with Nyall's opinion .

Here are my additional thoughts:

QGIS Core Development Skills is an important topic but it's not the
main one and it's probably hard to measure: the number of
commits/merged PRs in the last 2 years might be a good metric to
determine the skills.

What is much more important to me is commitment to the project: there
are people who have the a.m. skills and also have been spending a
large amount of their free/volunteer time developing QGIS core
features and fixing bugs in QGIS core - and they have been doing this
FOR YEARS! - I think that the paid bug fixing program is an important
source of income for those people expecially when they are self
employed and it is also a small (compared to the real time they spend
on the project) reward for their continuous long lasting activity on
the project.

Think about a contributor that has spent a decade contributing his
free time to QGIS with no funds that finds out that a junior intern in
a company is getting QGIS funds for bug fixing, how should she feel?

So, it's difficult to draw a line, but our limited funds are IMO
better spent when given to core developers that have a long and
continuous history of contribution and commitment to the project.

My preliminary proposal for the rules:

- at least XXX years of QGIS community contribution (it might not be
C++ core but any other QGIS contribution such as documentation,
helping people on mailing lists etc.)
- a YYY number of accepted PRs/commits in the last 2 years
- core developer "status", because QGIS bugfixing is mainly C++ (and a
bit of Python)

I am not sure about the values: XXX may be something between 2 and 4
and YYY something like 10 PRs and/or 100 commits?

Note that the above rules would probably exclude some of the
participants to the last few bug fixing rounds, I'm sorry for them.

Kind regards.

>
>
> On 29/06/2020 09:56, Saber Razmjooei wrote:
>
>  > not junior developers but people with real talent and skills, experienced developers with knowledge C++, Qt, Python, etc.
>
> In our experience, working with GSOC students and spending time to mentor and help them to get to know the code/community, they have REAL talents and their contributions have been on par or exceeding some of those "senior" developers who get paid for living.
>
> Kind regards
> Saber
>
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 17:26, Vincent Picavet (ml) <vincent.ml at oslandia.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 26/06/2020 11:27, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>> > Vincent - snipping out the 99% of your email I agree with -- don't
>> > take my comments below as meaning I disagree with the bulk of your
>> > reply! :)
>>
>> Ok, great to hear :-)
>>
>> Let's discuss the remaining disagreement then.
>>
>> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 18:56, Vincent Picavet (ml)
>> >> I tend to disagree here, because I consider that growing the community and
>> >> onboarding new developers has much more value in the long run, than having a
>> >> code developped 20% faster.
>> >
>> > Honestly, in the case of the current crop of "core developers", I
>> > think 20% is a huge disservice to their skills. I'd honestly,
>> > conservatively, estimate that a developer who already has intimate
>> > knowledge of the QGIS codebase, Qt, GDAL etc will be at a minimum 10x
>> > faster than a new contributor to the project. I don't think anyone
>> > could ever argue that we only get 20% more value from funding Even's
>> > time vs someone completely new to the project! (Try 20k% more value,
>> > and you're in the right ballpark...)
>>
>> I did not want to underestimate the efficiency of long-term core developers. Of
>> course they are faster, and probably produce much better quality for the code.
>> "20%" was not to take as an absolute number, forget this number. My point is not
>> about numbers anyway.
>> The reality is much more complex than this : QGIS codebase is huge and even a
>> long term contributor may have trouble in some areas of the code. And other
>> contributors having never contributed to QGIS could be really efficient because
>> they focus on an area they are expert in ( imagine Even before any contribution
>> to QGIS core, but knowing extensively GDAL ).
>> My point is : diversity and growing developer's community is difficult, while
>> highly required for a project to be sane, avoid bus-factor and continue to strive.
>>
>>
>> >> I would personnaly like to see the grant program as an onboarding program. But
>> >> this is not a strong request, and maybe we could have another program dedicated
>> >> especially to onboarding new developers ?
>> >
>> > I disagree - I think given the current round of high quality
>> > submissions it's clear that even when we restrict the program to
>> > established contributors there's more high value work vs funds
>> > available. If we divert some of these grant funds to onboard new
>> > contributors then it's definitely going to be at the cost of the
>> > high-priority submissions we already receive.
>> >
>> > But regarding a dedicated program -- isn't GSOC ideal for this? That's
>> > exactly what it's oriented to, and doesn't cost us anything...!
>>
>> I think we are not really talking of the same thing. GSoC is for students,
>> junior developers. While it is a great program which should probably be used
>> more to onboard new junior developers to the project, it is not really what I
>> had in mind.
>>
>> I am talking about onboarding new developers, not junior developers but people
>> with real talent and skills, experienced developers with knowledge C++, Qt,
>> Python, etc.
>> GSoC is not adapted for them, and we do not really have any incentive for this
>> kind of people to join the project. This is where room for improvement lies.
>>
>> >>> Fully agree, we should have the same thing for a "non-coding" contributor
>> >>> (think Richard, Harrisou, Giovanni ...) which do an amazing job for QGIS as a
>> >>> project but don't express it in C++
>> >>
>> >> +1
>> >
>> > I'm also +1, but I think we should separate the terms explicitly here.
>> > I would like to see the "developer endorsed by QGIS" title as a
>> > reflection of their **coding** talents, and something which can be
>> > used on a CV/resume as a reflection of their development skills. The
>> > "endorsed, high value" community contributor title should be used for
>> > non-developer contributors only, and have it's own set of guidelines
>> > for eligibility.
>>
>> I always find differentiating "the developer" from other contributors tends to
>> minimize "other contributors" importance and value. But I understand that
>> eligibility could have different rules, and therefore a specific role would be
>> required. We would have to be careful to give them as much importance as
>> developers, if not more.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Vincent
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Saber Razmjooei
> www.lutraconsulting.co.uk
>
>
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> --
> Open Source GIS Expert / Water management
>
> mail: regis.haubourg at oslandia.com
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