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Postings from July 2010
In summary:
On Mon, Jul 05, 2010 at 09:32:37AM +0300, Gabor Szabo wrote:
> I really don't understand the dynamics of p5p.
As Craig said, it's just a mailing list, with about 600 subscribers.
What this means is, that
1: Everyone is volunteering their time
[with the exception of Dave Mitchell currently being paid to work on a
specific thing - hard long term bugs, which likely wouldn't overlap with
what you're proposing]
2: No-one can speak for anyone else, or as a collective.
For example, I can only say what I'm able to do, and what my opinion is.
> As I recall there were lots of discussions on the question what companies
> really need in regards of perl. Especially when the backward compatibility
> and deprecation issues were discussed. It seemed that not many companies
> were involved. Even if people employed by companies were involved that
> was not obvious (to me).
It's not obvious to me either, but most people mailing the list are employed,
and I suspect that most either don't use their work address, or are clear that
they aren't officially speaking for work.
> If I understand correctly if some company would come and say we
> would like feature XYZ to be implemented in perl. Even if there was
> a consensus in p5p that feature XYZ is good there was no way for the
> company to actually get to XYZ.
> Unless it gets lucky and one of the p5p members thinks that XYZ is
> interesting enough for him to work on in his spare time.
Correct. Because everyone is a volunteer.
> There would be no one who would be ready to implement it for money
> or p5p would not like the idea of someone being paid for that.
My observation is, that as best I can tell, there is no-one obvious who is in
a position to implement it for money.
My opinion is, that the consensus is, that no-one would object to someone
being *paid* to implement anything. The issues are
a: whether that person is competent to implement it well
b: whether the consensus is that that feature is desired
c: whether the amount and type of help that person needs overwhelms the
volunteers available to provide the help
none of that depends on paid vs volunteer. Only on quality and ability.
> So it seems p5p wants to get feedback from companies but then
> says we won't actually do anything with that feedback.
Roughly yes. Because it's a mailing list of volunteers. No-one can promise
the time or effort of anyone else.
> That does not sound good. What did I misunderstand?
That it's a mailing list of volunteers, not an organisation able to make a
formal collective decision, and formally allocate resources.
> Would it make any difference if you knew that the company paid TPF
> for some generic idea of "ongoing perl development"?
> Not paid directly for the implementation of the thing but that it could
> be later allocated either as bug bounty, as a larger grant like the one
> of Dave Mitchell or even for some CPAN related grant?
>
> Would that make it more likely that someone will implement XYZ?
I believe that it would not help, principally because my observation of the
people contributing, their skills, and their availability, is that
a: TPF is not set up to tender for and supervise specific work items
b: In the short term at least, there is almost no-one available on the contract
market that TPF or any other organisation could directly employ to fix/
change/improve the core of Perl.
c: Dave's current availability (17 hours per week), will take more than a year
to exhaust booking.com's donation. I believe it realistic to assume that
on the basis of Dave's work ongoing, a general fund raising drive would not
find it hard to raise $45000 a year, steady state.
I (personally) *would* welcome you talking to companies about what they might
want, and how they might contribute to get this. But I think it's key to get
the expectation management right. In particular, on the assumption that
companies would be prepared to offer cash rather than developer time, then
I think that it's key for those companies to be aware up front that
a: Whilst they are welcome to donate to TPF, how TPF implements its grants
programme, and the non-organisational volunteer nature of the perl 5
developers, means that such money may not be spent any time soon.
b: If they are looking for a specific return from their donation, such as
"fix bugs that bug us", then likely a better course of action is to buy
a commercial support contract (ActiveState being the obvious candidate),
and then get value for money from it by getting ActiveState to fix those
bugs, and thus the fixes into the core perl distribution.
My concern is that it would be too easy to fall into what I see as a trap:
a: A very generous company gives money to TPF "for the benefit of Perl 5"
b: TPF is unable to spend this money, because there is no-one available to pay
c: The company is disappointed, and wants its money back
d: TPF looks bad; Perl generally looks bad
with a result far more negative than not getting a donation in the first place.
Getting companies more involved would be wonderful. But please, manage their
expectations appropriately.
Nicholas Clark
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