On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 12:18:30PM -0700, rupert.thurner wrote: > > On Mar 29, 6:24 pm, Jeff Hammel <jham...@openplans.org> wrote: > > The idea occured to me to setup a trac with bounties for plugin and other > > development work similar to RequestAHacks on trac-hacks but for paid work. > > While I'd love to do this...probably not right now as I don't have much > > free development time (although I could be persuaded). > > > > I for one would be interested in paid plugin development, depending on what > > the plugin would do and if it matches my skill-set. While I don't have > > much free time, Trac plugins are often pretty quick. Please feel free to > > email me with any plugin needs you might have. I'll say in passing that I > > don't have any interest in interfacing with proprietary software and that I > > only have linux machines at my disposal for development and testing. > > > > Maybe its worth setting up a list for people who are interested in seeking > > or doing paid development work, at least in the interim? > > > it would be great to discuss it on this list, even the requirements, > to create synergies. > > > rupert.
Just to throw out some things that have been going around in my head: * auction style bidding and back-room discussions should be discouraged so that interested developers don't have any incentive not to Play Nice * a potential client should post the desired hack (or a roadmap, if there is more than one phase) with a time-frame and the amount they are willing to pay. Both of these can be negotiable, but some ranges would be nice so that the desired hacks could be easily searched * once a client approves a developer for work on a project, the plugin is no longer open for others to work on (common sense, I know, just feel the need to say it) * is the resulting work open source? I would heartily say "yes", but I know there are different opinions on the matter. As far as I'm concerned, the client is paying for a solution to a problem, not for the software license. If it is useful to others, it should be publically available for the good of the Trac community * the spec should be as precise as possible, though obviously several passes at discussion will probably usually be necessary to refine what exactly are the deliverables * needless to say, any sort of infrastructure is a means of connecting client and developer and it is up to THEM (not to this list, not to as-yet-nonexistant web site, etc) to ensure the contract is fulfilled. In other words, no real legal protections are given, though of course if someone faults another person then the victim will probably want to note this in public forum. * is post-install support required? can clients pay for installation/setup work? How many bugs and support hours are asked per hack? What quality assurance is required? That's all I have off the top of my head. Assuming I have 6-10 hours free a week for development, I could do a decently complex plugin per week at least, just as a typical ballpark figure. My only real concern is coordination. Because Trac has a pretty good component architecture, this unfortunately gives rise to doing fairly substantial things as plugins, which is good in that it makes Trac really customizable, and bad that it gives rise to a plethora of duplicate functionality and results in poor coordination, and I think it is important that Trac core get some strong development as well as distilling the set of plugins down to as little duplicated functionality as possible and as much extensibility as possible. But its an orthogonal issue. I'd love to hear what thoughts others have had on this idea. Jeff --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Trac Users" group. To post to this group, send email to trac-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to trac-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/trac-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---