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Re: TPF bug-grant report #1

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From:
David E. Wheeler
Date:
August 2, 2010 09:44
Subject:
Re: TPF bug-grant report #1
Message ID:
61D587D4-6CF8-4931-9227-DAA7D01CAD91@kineticode.com
On Aug 2, 2010, at 9:34 AM, Zefram wrote:

> Nicholas Clark wrote:
>> Sadly, I don't see it as unnecessary, because we're still acquiring new bugs
>> (well, newly reported bugs) faster than 1 Dave can fix them.
>> 
>> Sadly, also, I don't have any good suggestions on how to fix this,
> 
> More Daves.  There are other core developers whose time could be
> purchased.  Doesn't scale indefinitely, of course, but I expect you
> could get a linear response from spending up to ten times as much money.
> How much bugfixing could *you* do, for example, if you didn't have to
> do anything else for your salary?

Well, and would you *want* to? It's not the most glorious work, not everyone wants to do it. It's thankless, despite a few of us explicitly thanking Mr. Mitchell (Thanks Dave x 100_000!).

> From an economics point of view: the current allocation of human
> resources is globally inefficient.  An efficient allocation would have
> the best Perl core hackers working primarily on the Perl core, but instead
> they're mostly employed on things other than the core.  We have a classic
> case of the public goods problem.  (Free software is much closer to the
> ideal of a public good than any physical good can be.)  Spending sponsor
> money on Dave is the beginning of an attempt to fix the market failure.
> Scaling it up is an obvious next step.

+1

> (I have an obvious interest here: I'm pretty pissed off about the
> long-term market failure around the application of my labour, and I'd
> be very happy to end up with an arrangement that let me hack for CPAN
> or the Perl core full-time.)

Have you applied for a grant, Zefram?

Best,

David



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