Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:50:20 +0000 (UTC) From: Vadim Goncharov <vadim_nuclight@mail.ru> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD problems/solutions: voting system & marketing surveys Message-ID: <slrnj4r99s.28dr.vadim_nuclight@kernblitz.nuclight.avtf.net>
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Hi! The previous message "FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve" may have been a little long to cover all problems/ideas/solutions on the first reading, but all problems could be essentially tracked down to one. The ultimate problem. > Nobody wants to do more and/or another way than he already does. < That is, it is not known who and how will solve those FreeBSD problems. Everyone thinks he's not "must" and will continue to do "interesting". Passivity. (and FreeBSD, meanwhile, slowly bowls along to grave, as a result) The obvious solution: Foundation hires Someone(TM). There are sponsored projects already. Does it work? Do people donate well for it? No. Why? Because there are no *concrete clear goals and tasks* for the work. Foundation (core@, etc., whoever may be responsible) passively awaits like a girl, who will come and takes. This almost always fails. "Imagine something, we'll pay" vs "Here is the job, let's negotiate a price". Donating people, from the other side, will not give much money for something blurred - where exactly will it go?.. What useful there will be for me (donator)?.. ...If this works bad, isn't it a time to experiment & try another approach? > Working hypothesis: \ people will more willingly donate and support for a project with \ clear goals. Calls for helpers, may be even more broad than \ announce@ subscribers, will succeed more and total donations with \ all such projects will exceed current ones. In other words, Foundation must act as an intermediate party between those who will work and those who will pay for concrete tasks set up by e.g. core@ or by user suggestions/need. Why it was not done earlier? Because many believe it's easy for users to find an implementor without such actions from Foundation, directly, or users don't need something, or it is easy for committer to get sponsored. So why we see hselasky@ saying "The only part which is missing is time and a good sponsor for this project" only here? Who ever heard about it in broad masses? Who ever checked this to be in reality? Who knows what our users think? > How to verify? We need marketing surveys for this. < So in previous message I've proposed a voting system, which could also be used for plain non-weighted surveys. An excerpt from previous msg: === This is a voting system (I could implement it), say, there is a mail voting@freebsd.org to which users send filled in vote forms, with selected answers from a survey published in announce@. The system has a database where users are recorded given their FreeBSD activity in mail lists etc., and votes are summed as follows: + 1.00 vote for anyone not in database (not involved to FreeBSD) + a decimal logarithm of number of posts to mail lists (2 votes for 100 posts, 3 votes for 1000 posts) + a binary logarithm of num PRs in GNATS db (6 votes for 64 send-pr's) + a proportion (say, N/2) of entries for this person in "svn log" (e.g. in "Submitted by:") + an assigned (by core@) number of votes in special exceptional DB (for corporation and the like) The system then presents results for each answer: 1) how many users voted, 2) how many votes summed. This is by no mean to measure "exact contribution", but to defend from anonymous users and trolls who not care about amount of work developers will need to. The results are viewed as a feedback to core team, not as a final decision - that's all for what marketing is solely exist. There no adequate feedback from users to developers currently at all - individual posts in mail lists are too small for statistics (what about ministat(1) for users, huh?..). === The more specifically, this is a Web form with a question and variants of answer, and a message to announce@ with the same and poll ID. The user enters answer and his e-mail on Web, or sends it directly to voting@ with poll ID. The system responds with UUID to verify e-mail is valid, the users just replies, and vote now sits in the DB. An example of a voting where "weighted democracy" could be used: | What you don't need so it should be axed out from base system? | | 0) I'm pretty happy right now, don't do axe anything | 1) BIND only | 2) BIND and Sendmail (provided it will be replaced by dma) | 3) Same as above, but also GCC | ... An example of plain user number counting survey: | There is a page with list of projects seeking sponsors (you can | add your wanted project there), how many you will donate for | implementor of the project you are in need for? | | 1) 1 - 10 $ | 2) 10 - 50 $ | 3) 50 - 100 $ | 4) 100 - 500 $ | 5) I'm money-bag ISP really needing it, I could afford even 50,000$ The latter is example of likely the first survey (wording needs clarification, of course). > So, I'm proposing to raise funds this way, \ for which marketing sureveys are needed, \ for which I propose this system. *I will implement this system if this will be really officially used* Officially means installed at freebsd.org with calls to vote made by authoritative Project members. (this letter is a technical sketch and you may correct me in the way how it should done (UI), I also don't know how mail is stored there on lists.freebsd.org but all this are details and are solvable. ) Please provide an official reply with opinion of the FreeBSD Project. -- WBR, Vadim Goncharov. ICQ#166852181 mailto:vadim_nuclight@mail.ru [Anti-Greenpeace][Sober FreeBSD zealot][http://nuclight.livejournal.com]
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