I have to say I'm not really convinced this would be a benefit to the project. I'm sure there are rules in the ASF and licenses that prevent it, but I can ony see an increase in conflicts of interest.
How do you decide if the dontated feature is large enough to warrant creditation? Do you take it away once the feature has changed substantially over time? The license prevents it but there could be disputes when individuals change the functionality of a corporate component, that they feel they have some ownership of. Giving thanks to someone for working on a feature should of course happen, but this is very different to stating on the website that the Parameters Interceptor is the work of Joe Bloggs. That would certinaly take away the feeling of collective ownership of the codebase. The fact that many projects are thriving without this suggests that maybe Struts is simply going though a stagnant period (I know that a lot of hard work is being done on 2.1, but it very much seems like the efforts of a core team). If a company with the resources required a feature would they not just create it? The fact they are not donated back smacks more of corporate policies, which this simply wouldn't change. Getting recognition is simply not of interest to a lot of businesses. Partly due to responsibilities it perceives it brings as well of being of little benefit. Would consumers really care that donations of code had been made to Struts? I can only think in the case of peers and consulting it would. Most certainly wouldn't when buying a book from say Amazon. I hope this isn't true of all companies, but it certainly is of the few I have worked for. ----- Original message ----- From: "Don Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Struts Developers List" <dev@struts.apache.org> Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:08:17 +1000 Subject: Feature sponsorship proposal As more and more companies start using open source software, many, like mine, are looking for ways to give back to the community. They want a way to contribute and ensure their contribution will be noticed and appreciated. What if we had a feature sponsorship program that encouraged companies to donate engineering time to filling out needed features in Struts? I imagine it would work like this: 1. The Struts community comes up with a short list of desired features with high-level specs 2. Companies (or individuals) could "sign up" for a feature and donate internal engineering time to implementing the feature 3. The Struts community would review then commit the feature 4. The release notes for that version and perhaps somewhere on the website would note who gets credit for the feature This would help those that want to donate time what features are most needed by the community and give them a way to receive recognition for their work in a very public way. A key component in this proposal is the way credit is given to the work, something that might encourage the marketing departments of the respective companies. The list of desired features is also important as it ensures their effort will not be in vain, and it also implies the support of the Struts dev community to work to apply the patch in a timely manner. Thoughts? Don --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
