Accessing devs

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)
I think LibreOffice approached it by just giving the link to the user-support mailing lists (they don't have a forum yet) and stating their misgivings about it, as i did here just now.  It's outside of the roadmap and lets users feel like they are taking control of issues that might only affect 1 individual, or 1 company.  

I had forgotten about The Planet.  The UDS is excellent and GSOC is good too.  I was hoping this thread might bring together a few ideas for ways of getting control over the situation with devs rather than us just sitting back wishing things were different and then pouncing on the devs that do arrive.  I don't know if there is a lack of devs or not but even if there isn't it might still be good to get more control of the situation and maybe find what we can offer the devs in return.  Experience, training, mentoring, freedom, opportunities such as GSOC, UDS, links into places such as that FreedomSponsors thing might well be things that attracts more devs to us.  
Regards from 
Tom :)  





>________________________________
> From: Pierre Slamich <pierre.slamich at gmail.com>
>To: Tom Davies <tomdavies04 at yahoo.co.uk> 
>Cc: Ubuntu Translators <ubuntu-translators at lists.ubuntu.com> 
>Sent: Friday, 10 May 2013, 14:23
>Subject: Re: Accessing devs
> 
>
>
>Hi Tom, 
>what in the roadmap would you consider a good candidature for this ? I'm reluctant to bring money into the game. We haven't called for help on the planet, and we don't know what the UDS will bring (we may get dev support).
>
>
>sincerely,
>Pierre
>
>
>Pierre Slamich
>pierre.slamich at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>2013/5/10 Tom Davies <tomdavies04 at yahoo.co.uk>
>
>Hi :)
>>I'm not sure about this 
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>>http://blog.freedomsponsors.org/
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>>The idea is for individuals or organisations to pick a bug-report or requested functionality or whatever and then write a promise to pay $£xx to whoever does the work.  Then if a dev does manage to solve the problem or add the functionality or whatever then the Freedom Sponsors people collect the money from all the promises and pays the devs.  
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>>Where it gets a bit hazy for me is that PayPal may charge a fee on top of that and Freedom Sponsors charge 3% on top too, in order to try to cover administration costs.  Both things are allowed under GPL licenses but i know some people will object to paying anything for anything mistakenly thinking that Free (as in freedom) has to be free (as in beer).  A lot of people do or have done a lot for free and it wrankles a bit to be asked to pay.  On the other hand i got shed loads back just by being involved, back when i was quite into helping people on the Launchpad Answers.  
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>>I have just found out that GSOC closed it's doors last week but there is always next year.  I think LibreOffice got  couple of projects in before the doors closed so hopefully the work will be done on them over the summer.  Does anyone know of other such projects?  
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>>Regards from  
>>Tom :)  
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>
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