Idea: listing commercial prioritisation options as a new section in the developer guide?
Hi folks,
A question I occasionally get asked by organisations that use Python commercially but don't currently employ any core developers themselves is "How can we prioritise getting particular issues fixed/reviewed/merged?".
A related problem we have in the PSF is knowing which core developers are available for freelance & consulting work when organisations approach us regarding larger projects. At the moment, those kinds of referrals are reliant on Board members' personal knowledge of who amongst the core development team is open to that style of employment and making direct introductions, which is neither transparent nor fair.
As such, what do folks think of the idea of a new, *opt-in* section in the developer guide, similar to the current experts index, but allowing core developers to indicate the ways in which we're willing to provide paid support.
I'd see four likely sections in such a document:
- Freelance consultants: folks that are available for contract opportunities at the individual level
- Consulting companies: folks that are available for contract opportunities, but work for larger consulting organisations rather than contracting directly
- Commercial redistributors: folks that work for commercial Python redistributors and are willing and able to both help in getting customer issues resolved and in acting as a point of escalation for their colleagues
- Direct employment: folks that work directly for organisations that use Python extensively, and hence are able to act as a point of escalation for their colleagues
The latter three categories would be further broken out by employer, while the first would just be a list of names and professional contact details.
Regards, Nick.
P.S. Disclosure: I do have my own interests in mind here, both personally and professionally. At a personal level, I'm a strong believer in "If you want me to care about your opinion on how I spend my time, pay me", so it makes sense to me to make it easy for more commercially-minded core developers to say "Pay me or my employer if you'd like to influence my time allocation". Professionally, it's definitely in my interests for both Python core developers and commercial Python redistributors to be recognised as a group for their expertise and overall influence on the technology sector.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
I like it, +1.
It'd also be useful to see other developers' availability (i.e. "free for six months from March 2016") if you ever wanted to try and organize a pitch-to-the-PSF-for-sponsorship type project.
Trent.On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 03:43:22PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
Hi folks,
A question I occasionally get asked by organisations that use Python commercially but don't currently employ any core developers themselves is "How can we prioritise getting particular issues fixed/reviewed/merged?".
A related problem we have in the PSF is knowing which core developers are available for freelance & consulting work when organisations approach us regarding larger projects. At the moment, those kinds of referrals are reliant on Board members' personal knowledge of who amongst the core development team is open to that style of employment and making direct introductions, which is neither transparent nor fair.
As such, what do folks think of the idea of a new, *opt-in* section in the developer guide, similar to the current experts index, but allowing core developers to indicate the ways in which we're willing to provide paid support.
I'd see four likely sections in such a document:
- Freelance consultants: folks that are available for contract opportunities at the individual level
- Consulting companies: folks that are available for contract opportunities, but work for larger consulting organisations rather than contracting directly
- Commercial redistributors: folks that work for commercial Python redistributors and are willing and able to both help in getting customer issues resolved and in acting as a point of escalation for their colleagues
- Direct employment: folks that work directly for organisations that use Python extensively, and hence are able to act as a point of escalation for their colleagues
The latter three categories would be further broken out by employer, while the first would just be a list of names and professional contact details.
Regards, Nick.
P.S. Disclosure: I do have my own interests in mind here, both personally and professionally. At a personal level, I'm a strong believer in "If you want me to care about your opinion on how I spend my time, pay me", so it makes sense to me to make it easy for more commercially-minded core developers to say "Pay me or my employer if you'd like to influence my time allocation". Professionally, it's definitely in my interests for both Python core developers and commercial Python redistributors to be recognised as a group for their expertise and overall influence on the technology sector.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
It doesn't sound like the devguide is ideally the right place for it.
Actually, for a guide devoted to attract new contributors, saying "hey, we'd really like you to contribute on a volunteer basis, but here is a list of people who prefer being paid to do the same thing" may send the wrong message.
I also understand the pragmatic side of the proposal, which is that the devguide has an established development and contribution process where it is easy to propose changes and get them discussed and accepted (compared to, say, the python.org website which may still be still more or less of a... "clusterfuck", perhaps? :-)).
I'm saying that, regardless of whether I may want to be included in such a list or not (I'm currently happily employed by a company which would definitely deserve to get on the list, though - and, hey, so is Trent too :-)).
Regards
Antoine.
Le 19/09/2015 14:50, Trent Nelson a écrit :
I like it, +1.
It'd also be useful to see other developers' availability (i.e. "free for six months from March 2016") if you ever wanted to try and organize a pitch-to-the-PSF-for-sponsorship type project.
Trent.On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 03:43:22PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
Hi folks,
A question I occasionally get asked by organisations that use Python commercially but don't currently employ any core developers themselves is "How can we prioritise getting particular issues fixed/reviewed/merged?".
A related problem we have in the PSF is knowing which core developers are available for freelance & consulting work when organisations approach us regarding larger projects. At the moment, those kinds of referrals are reliant on Board members' personal knowledge of who amongst the core development team is open to that style of employment and making direct introductions, which is neither transparent nor fair.
As such, what do folks think of the idea of a new, *opt-in* section in the developer guide, similar to the current experts index, but allowing core developers to indicate the ways in which we're willing to provide paid support.
I'd see four likely sections in such a document:
- Freelance consultants: folks that are available for contract opportunities at the individual level
- Consulting companies: folks that are available for contract opportunities, but work for larger consulting organisations rather than contracting directly
- Commercial redistributors: folks that work for commercial Python redistributors and are willing and able to both help in getting customer issues resolved and in acting as a point of escalation for their colleagues
- Direct employment: folks that work directly for organisations that use Python extensively, and hence are able to act as a point of escalation for their colleagues
The latter three categories would be further broken out by employer, while the first would just be a list of names and professional contact details.
Regards, Nick.
P.S. Disclosure: I do have my own interests in mind here, both personally and professionally. At a personal level, I'm a strong believer in "If you want me to care about your opinion on how I spend my time, pay me", so it makes sense to me to make it easy for more commercially-minded core developers to say "Pay me or my employer if you'd like to influence my time allocation". Professionally, it's definitely in my interests for both Python core developers and commercial Python redistributors to be recognised as a group for their expertise and overall influence on the technology sector.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
python-committers mailing list python-committers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-committers
On 20 Sep 2015 00:02, "Antoine Pitrou" antoine@python.org wrote:
It doesn't sound like the devguide is ideally the right place for it.
Actually, for a guide devoted to attract new contributors, saying "hey, we'd really like you to contribute on a volunteer basis, but here is a list of people who prefer being paid to do the same thing" may send the wrong message.
Yeah, part of this would involve emphasising that the main thing being prioritised commercially is writing & reviewing changes on behalf of *other people* - I consider that a distinct pool of time from the time we contribute because we find contributing to be an inherently rewarding activity.
That said, one of the problems faced by folks that *do* have permission to spend work time on contributing to CPython, but aren't yet core contributors themselves, is that their employer may not currently have a way to ensure they're mentored appropriately.
Just as happens with volunteers looking to contribute on their own time, it's a problem for us as a community when someone has successfully made the case to their employer that a fix or improvement should be contributed back upstream on work time, only to see it languish on the tracker.
While I don't think it's reasonable to ask volunteers to prioritise reviewing commercially developed contributions, I do think it's reasonable to facilitate folks getting paid to mentor potential future contributors and build direct relationships with organisations willing to pay people to work on CPython.
I also understand the pragmatic side of the proposal, which is that the devguide has an established development and contribution process where it is easy to propose changes and get them discussed and accepted
That's part of it, but I also think we (as in those of us with commit privileges that are also professional developers) bear the responsibility for deciding how transparent we want to be about the commercial aspects of the development process that have emerged over time, rather than having that responsibility fall on the PSF.
As a next step, I'll draft a page that lists me (and anyone else that volunteers to be listed) to show a specific proposed structure, and give folks something more concrete to discuss.
Cheers, Nick.
Le 19/09/2015 18:45, Nick Coghlan a écrit :
That's part of it, but I also think we (as in those of us with commit privileges that are also professional developers) bear the responsibility for deciding how transparent we want to be about the commercial aspects of the development process that have emerged over time, rather than having that responsibility fall on the PSF.
You have a very good point here. Thank you for spelling it.
Regards,
Antoine.
On 20 September 2015 at 03:04, Antoine Pitrou antoine@python.org wrote:
Le 19/09/2015 18:45, Nick Coghlan a écrit :
That's part of it, but I also think we (as in those of us with commit privileges that are also professional developers) bear the responsibility for deciding how transparent we want to be about the commercial aspects of the development process that have emerged over time, rather than having that responsibility fall on the PSF.
You have a very good point here. Thank you for spelling it.
I've posted a draft patch at http://bugs.python.org/issue25194
Based on this discussion, I used the "disclosure of interests" aspect as the primary framing - the specific name, "Register of Financial Interests", is often used for that purpose in a political context. The stakes are much lower here, so the proposal is limited to only covering our primary financial interest, and even then remaining entirely voluntary, but the general concept is the same: providing folks with relevant background information while holding a position that grants structural power above and beyond our personal influence with others.
I've suggested 5 draft categories based on my personal knowledge of what some of the other core developers do for a living:
- Consultants and Freelance Developers
- Software Development Education & Training
- Commercial Python Redistributors
- Other Commercial Organizations
- Non-Commercial Organizations
Regards, Nick.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
On 20Sep2015 0229, Nick Coghlan wrote:
I've suggested 5 draft categories based on my personal knowledge of what some of the other core developers do for a living:
- Consultants and Freelance Developers
- Software Development Education & Training
- Commercial Python Redistributors
- Other Commercial Organizations
- Non-Commercial Organizations
Not wanting to sound like a job advertisement, but if you're in category #1 above, currently looking for work, and _haven't_ updated devguide/motivations.rst to provide a way for e.g. Microsoft to contact you, today might be a good day to do that.
Cheers, Steve
On Sep 19, 2015, at 03:43 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
As such, what do folks think of the idea of a new, *opt-in* section in the developer guide, similar to the current experts index, but allowing core developers to indicate the ways in which we're willing to provide paid support.
It's certainly useful information to have, but I'm not sure about using the devguide for that. In the Mailman world, we use a wiki page. So far, it's self-serve, hasn't been abused, and I know it's helped people connect for paid consulting (not me, but others in our community).
Cheers, -Barry
On 20 Sep 2015 02:40, "Barry Warsaw" barry@python.org wrote:
On Sep 19, 2015, at 03:43 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
As such, what do folks think of the idea of a new, *opt-in* section in the developer guide, similar to the current experts index, but allowing core developers to indicate the ways in which we're willing to provide paid support.
It's certainly useful information to have, but I'm not sure about using
devguide for that. In the Mailman world, we use a wiki page. So far, it's self-serve, hasn't been abused, and I know it's helped people connect for
the paid
consulting (not me, but others in our community).
I did consider the wiki, but the nice thing about using an "Expert's Index" style page in the devguide is that it's self-certifying: the mere fact of being on the list inherently demonstrates that you have the necessary access to add yourself to the list.
The wiki's still a good fallback option, though.
Cheers, Nick.
participants (5)
-
Antoine Pitrou -
Barry Warsaw -
Nick Coghlan -
Steve Dower -
Trent Nelson