On Sat, Jul 30, 2016 at 12:23:57AM -0700, Afif Elghraoui wrote: > The user can file an RFP, but nobody usually has the spare time to take > it up solely because of someone's request. Perhaps we as a project can
True, but RFP work as a promotion, too. Its not like anyone could claim to know the entire internet, so "even" non-technical users can stumble upon a gem someone more technical inclined would be very happy to package (as (s)he would use it, too) if only (s)he would know it exists. Also, even if non-technical now, that might very well be a good moment to change that. After all, it is for your own good… also most people aren't born as Debian contributors, so that isn't an uncommon path. > suggest to users the crowdfunding the development of a package, where > interested users can pool together funds, enabling a DD or other > interested Debian contributor to actually make the package and integrate > it into Debian. The usual caveats of bugbounties apply: Who is to decide who gets the money & how do you prevent encouraging contributors [even more] to prefer packaging shiny new stuff instead of caring about already packaged stuff. Now it would even make economical sense to upload a package with the intention to let it molder until ftp-masters remove it as unmaintained from the archive as at that point you can collect funds again to run the next update round. If you don't believe that a bit of money could attract such kinds of behaviour, feel free to ask GSoC admins/mentors what they have to deal with… Even if we assume none of our current contributors can be that easily spoiled, for every new contributor you would need to judge the intention and a failure to detect the bad apples incurs a heavy fee on everyone who ends up needing to deal with the fallout like QA, FTP, release & security teams. None of them being on your initial payroll. It is claimed that when reporters asked astronaut Alan Shepard what he thought about as he sat in a rocket ready for take off, he replied "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder". I don't want to say that about our package repository. If you must, fund a person/group instead. Thankfully you can do that quite easily already: Donate to Debian. If you will, Debian even runs a bounty program: Valuable contributions of all kinds can gain you perks like DD status, free access to otherwise expensive hardware, a dependable peer group for social support and even monetary sponsorships in various forms to attend DebConf and sprints. Best regards David Kalnischkies
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