Hmm... I think I was confused when I wrote this. I wasn't talking about
Contributor Grants, but rather I thought there was some plan to award
some other benefit to folks who were contributing.
If we're talking about Contributor Grants, then just as in Core
Contributor Grants, I think the employer of record should have _no_
bearing whatsoever.
-- Garrett
Mike Gerdts wrote:
> On 4/17/07, Garrett D'Amore <garrett at damore.org> wrote:
>> I'd therefore suggest that any awarding of "contributor awards" consider
>> _personal_ contributions, regardless of place of employment. However,
>> work done on the behalf of a big company (like Sun Microsystems)
>> represents contribution by the employer, not by the individual. Such
>> work therefore should be excluded. (There may be other similar
>> contributions from outside commercial entities... I'm not sure.)
>
> I think this is a bad idea. Part of the motivation for companies to
> allow/encourage/mandate their employees to participate in OpenSolaris
> is the idea that these contributions will help shape the direction of
> OpenSolaris (and Solaris) through code and other influence. If that
> motivation is gone, this will likely have the impact of missing out on
> many potential contributions from those that have put [Open]Solaris to
> use on a large scale or in ways not intended by the group defined as
> "Sun and some hobbyists".
>
> The other side of this is if a large employer (like Sun) had thousands
> of people contributing, they could easily have the majority in every
> vote if so mandated (and somehow audited) by the employer. I can
> honestly say that I don't believe that Sun could get all of their
> employee contributors to vote the same way. If they could, that would
> mean that the life had already been sucked out of all of those
> employees and the company is on a rapid downward spiral. This would
> imply that any such majority would be temporary.
>
> Mike
>
