[Qgis-psc] Finalizing the budget

[Alessandro Pasotti]

Hi Matthias,

Thank you for your comments, I agree with you but there is something I
don't feel right: using QGIS budget for PR reviews that are fully
funded by a customer.

Maybe we could say something like this: "If your PR was fully funded
by a customer please consider making a donation to the QGIS project to
cover the costs of the PR review process."

There is also an unwritten habit among developers where we exchange
reviews between us, this also works, but it doesn't for occasional
contributors.

At the end of the day what we need to establish is a process that
makes it more efficient to incorporate good code into QGIS, I think we
are wasting opportunities here and that the motivation to make
volunteer/unpaid contributions after seeing them regularly go stale is
dropping rapidly.

Kind regards.



On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 8:23 PM Matthias Kuhn via QGIS-PSC
<qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Thank you very much for diving into this and continuing this discussion.
> Providing comprehensive and supportive pull request reviews is a tough but important task that needs skills on technical, social and application level.
>
> A solid budget to support this ongoing effort helps a lot to maintain a friendly, responsive and efficient ecosystem.
>
> One part of the discussion is about commercial companies who provide professional QGIS development services. I think most voices raised so far tended towards letting companies handle pull request reviews as part of their internal development process. While I can see where this comes from, I think this system also has its limitations. Mainly two questions come to my mind. On the one hand, for one person companies it is not clear to me how this should work and on the other hand, an external (i.e. independently financed) reviewer will always be more independent and free to ask for bigger changes or worst case even reject some changes. It also happens that people employed by companies still have enough love for QGIS to devote some volunteer time to contribute, in which case the same-company rule is also not ideal.
>
> I am also in favor of adjusting the pull request template, as suggested by Régis. It's always a thin line between being friendly and being too verbose.
>
> Kind regards
> Matthias
>
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 11:27 AM Régis Haubourg via QGIS-PSC <qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I would go in favor of a fixed budget too, because when things are not fixed in advance, I saw in my previous work how customer's projects tend to take over long term tasks, even if they are funded.
>>
>> A fixed budget helps clarifying plannings. That's however not the magical solution.
>>
>> One point that came to my mind, looking at the pull requests : Should we treat code review of community work the same way as enterprise funded work?
>>
>> My point is that review costs should be included in commercial activities and not relying on QGIS's community donations to fullfill the QA process.
>>
>> Community's work however, which is the best way to welcome new long term contributors, should not lack behind because all dev's have a lot of commercial contracts or need to focus on family / house building  sometimes
>>
>> I feel this is the current situation, correct me if I'm wrong.
>>
>> That said being able to tell if the pull request is originated by volunteers or not, is a gray zone. When it comes to contract within the network of our friendly commercial companies, developers know themselves enough to be able to tell.
>>
>> When it is a case like, let's say Amazon's PR, it is easy to tell also.
>>
>> But what about new contributors investing in the own efforts, still working in a big company or local authority ? I am afraid this is a grey zone we never will be able to clarify formally and we maybe should use nudging more than strict rules there.
>>
>> What about modifying the current pull request template from
>>
>> ' Reviewing is a process done by project maintainers, mostly on a volunteer basis. We try to keep the overhead as small as possible and appreciate if you help us to do so by checking the following list. [..] "
>>
>> to
>>
>> " Thanks a lot for submitting this proposal ! QGIS.org is a non profit organization that uses donations a membership fees to fund part of the code reviews and bug fixing efforts. A lot of this effort is done on a volunteer basis by project maintainenrs.
>>
>>  If your company is making profits, or saving lots of licence fees using QGIS, sponsoring QGIS's project and hiring directly a QGIS core developer can help a lot in speeding up the review process.
>>
>> Community members, you're more than welcome to propose code changes, we're doing our best to review you're proposal, but we are sometimes a bit flooded :) "
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Régis
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13/12/2023 09:00, Alessandro Pasotti via QGIS-PSC wrote:
>>
>> I would really like to hear what other core devs think about this proposal though, I only spoke with a few of them.
>>
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>
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-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
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