Hi Andreas Thanks for the overview of the financial side of things. Regarding budget allocation it would make sense to me to reduce bug-fixing and grants budget and increase the spending on reviews. In my opinion both bug-fixing and grants need some improvements anyway to bring more value to QGIS project, but that's for a separate discussion (e.g. more focus on high priority bugs, better voting system for grants to consider relevance/impact + proposal quality + cost).
Speaking of myself, I would be happy to join the paid reviews efforts to lower the fatigue of reviewers. And I hope it would attract some other QGIS devs to join as well... Regards Martin On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 11:06 AM Andreas Neumann <a.neum...@carto.net> wrote: > Hi all, > > To answer the financial question here: > > we had 6k € in the 2020 budget. This was distributed between Nyall (2.7k > €) and Matthias/OPENGIS (2.7k €) and Alessandro (600 €, Server related > reviews). > > In 2021 we increased and approved the budget to 10k. I am waiting for a > proposal how to distribute this amount in 2021. > > Without having more sustaining members we can only increase these 10k by > chipping away money from bug fixing (the bulk of our expenses) or the grant > program (which is with 25k € not very large in 2021, less than in 2020). > > But finances are only parts of the problem, as discussed here. The main > issue might be finding skilled devs who know the code base well and > distribute this task more evenly between diffferent shoulders. Of course > there is a connection between available funds and finding people working on > reviewing ... > > Greetings, > > Andreas > > On 2021-05-01 13:04, Alessandro Pasotti wrote: > > Thank you Martin, > > I agree with your proposal, this is in line with what we have already > discussed and it sounds a sustainable way to solve the problem, I'm not > sure about the budget though: Andreas will probably have more information > on that. > > > > On Sat, May 1, 2021 at 12:33 PM Martin Dobias <wonder...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi all > > On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 12:07 AM Nyall Dawson <nyall.daw...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > This is a public plea for more developers who are very familiar with > different parts of the QGIS codebase to become actively involved in > backport PR management. > > > (Nyall later clarified this is not only about backport PRs, but all > reviews in general) > > Thanks for starting this thread - it is a discussion we definitely need to > have. (And apologies for getting back to this soooo late!) > > Pull request reviews are absolutely vital part of the QGIS development, a > chance to get bugs fixed before they even get into QGIS code. Quality > reviews also need a good amount of expertise of the QGIS code - often the > hardest part of a review is not the code included is the pull request, but > figuring out what is missing... > > Speaking of myself, I used to review pull requests regularly... But after > several years I have to admit I mostly gave up doing that unless someone > asks me to do a review. The pace of QGIS development is not getting any > slower (which is great!), so there is a constant flow of new pull requests > and doing code reviews regularly is not something I want to do in my free > time... I am happy to do some QGIS work in my free time, but only doing > what I want to do :-) > > For a company, strictly business speaking, sparing 15 minutes a day of a > senior developer is roughly equivalent to lost profit of few thousands of > EUR (assuming ~50 hours / year). And many reviews need much more time than > 15 minutes... Moreover companies doing QGIS dev are often already donating > to QGIS as sustaining members... > > In a mail in the thread it was suggested that companies doing QGIS > development should add extra cost to quotes to accommodate the time for > reviews (of unrelated pull requests). Not sure I agree with that - if a > company had constant income from QGIS dev, that's doable, but if we are > talking about occasional QGIS dev work, that is hard to plan. > > From all of that above, my thinking is that in order to make things > sustainable, regular pull request reviews should be ideally funded by > QGIS.org similarly to how paid bug-fixing sprints work. It is the kind of > project maintainance work that needs to be done, it is not always super fun > and it requires input of someone from a small group of people that are > already donating lots of their free time. > > My proposal would be therefore along these lines: > - PSC allocates annual budget to reviews > - core devs interested in participating would indicate their availability > (eligibility may be the same as with paid bug fixing) > - PSC tells devs how much paid time they can spend on reviews > - paid devs should do reviews regularly, e.g. at least twice a week, > ideally every day - not just once a month or so > - paid devs would self-assign themselves to PRs and do reviews > - if a PR is not picked up by anyone e.g. within 3 days, PR queue manager > would assign it to one of the paid devs > - paid devs keep track of their time in a spreadsheet and invoice > (quarterly?) up to the amount they were allocated > > I believe this approach should solve our problems: > - remove stress from growing PR queue and reviewer burnout > - get more core devs (who otherwise may not be available) to do reviews > - reduce frustration from devs submitting PRs when their PRs are not > getting attention > > In my humble opinion, good quality reviews are even more important than > the regular paid bug fixing or grants. A review that is rushed due to lack > of time may omit important code details, or focus only on code style... > > We could start with a relatively small budget and compensate the extremely > valuable work that reviewers (Nyall and others) are already doing. > > Regards > Martin > > _______________________________________________ > QGIS-Developer mailing list > QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > > > > -- > Alessandro Pasotti > QCooperative: www.qcooperative.net > ItOpen: www.itopen.it > > _______________________________________________ > QGIS-Developer mailing list > QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > > >
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