:+1: for the "Recommended Implementation Partners"... informally I think some people know these companies already, but it's a great idea to make this more visible.
On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 5:34 PM Michael Vorburger <m...@vorburger.ch> wrote: > Hello Airsay & everyone, > > Airsay raised the following interesting question on the "Fineract > Customization" email thread, which to me seems worth discussing on a fresh > new email thread here: > > "Are there any avenues to donate to the project to have specific > functionality built into Fineract?" > > So, you CAN donate to the ASF at https://donate.apache.org, but this > ("just") contributes to the capex & opex costs of e.g.the Apache Software > Foundation (ASF) running issues.apache.org etc. for all projects. > > You CANNOT donate directly to our Apache Fineract project, and that's > perhaps a Good Thing and a Feature, not a Bug? ;-) It would be complicated > to determine where such money would go (IMHO). > > You COULD certainly just donate to specific individuals; e.g. I personally > set up https://github.com/sponsors/vorburger once.. :-) > > BUT I suspect that you may really be asking something else... what you > possibly are really getting at here is "I have problem XYZ or feature > request ABC, and am looking for someone to implement that for me, and am > willing to pay any interested party real money to do so" - am I right in > assuming that may at least partially be the real question that you were > asking? > > As far as I know, there absolutely are parties possibly interested in > working with folks such as you like this (for full disclosure: I > personally am NOT one of them). But perhaps it's not so obvious to you how > to connect with such parties? I believe we all together as the project > community could perhaps do better at enabling this. A while ago we > discussed some ideas about creating some sort of magical sophisticated > "matchmaking marketplace" site for such requests. We haven't really > progressed on this, but... perhaps this really isn't that complicated? I > have a simple suggestion for you, and anyone else interested: > > If you need something done which you don't have the know how for > implementing yourself, and don't want to wait for a volunteer to possibly > look into some day, then first create a JIRA issue describing whatever it > is - as always. Then send a short email to this developer mailing list > sounding something like this: Subject: "$€¥£₱ for FINERACT-123", Body: > "Hello, we need FINERACT-123, and are willing to pay a mutually agreed upon > fee we'll privately settle on first to anyone interested who is able to > fully implement that to our specification when a Pull Request for the > requested functionality was made available and merged into the develop > branch of Fineract. Please direct reply offlist to me with any questions > and your proposed quotes for implementing issue FINERACT-123." > > BTW if I were you, I would fairly strongly feel that it is in both YOUR > and this community's interest to have any such work done "upstream first", > on https://github.com/apache/fineract. To you, it makes it easier to > upgrade to new releases. To us, it helps move a common unified code base > with new features and bug fixes forward. If it's functionality that someone > implements for you on a "private fork" that they are offering you, then > discussing that, IMHO, should not happen on this public mailing list at > all. We do understand that sometimes customization requests require changes > to existing code, but believe that it's possible to combine "upstream > first" and "local customizations" through modularity; there is currently > new energy on exploring this (NB FINERACT-1127 & FINERACT-1171) - more > about that separately later. > > Maybe you'll get 0 replies to such an email. But IMHO it's worth giving > that a try and see what you get... I'm (very) curious myself! It's IMHO > totally OK for follow-up discussions to be held privately. We the community > would simply see JIRAs being self assigned, pull requests being raised, > reviewed and merged. Money may have flown to Make It So - there's nothing > wrong with that (at least to me personally), and that doesn't have to be > public on list. > > If something like the model outlined here takes on and proves to work, > then the Apache Fineract community could eventually even start to maintain > some sort of list, in a simple MD doc on Git, about "Recommended > Implementation Partners" - based on publicly verifiable contribution track > records (i.e. merged PRs) by parties offering such services in reply to > "$€¥£₱ for FINERACT-123" email threads. > > Further thoughts on this topic very much welcome on this public thread! > > M. >
