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• Launchpad Entry: dev-pledgebank

• Packages affected:

Summary

Link feature requests to other community contributions via a pledge system. The person requesting a feature would submit it and pledge to do some work on ubuntu in kind and encourage others to do the same. Examples would be bug triage and documentation. A developer would specify the level and type on in kind contributions required to do the implementation.

Rationale

DevelopmentPledgebank has the following possible advantages :

• improve the communication between users and the developers
• it helps give users a feeling of being part in the community
• it helps encourage users to do contributions
• it helps (volunteering) developers find nice ideas to implement that users might want
• developers can specify what kind of contributions they want in return for implementing a feature. They can for example get user feedback and testing.
• developer visibility of user requests
• bring people in a more active role in the community

Use Cases

• Jantje is a forum user and has an idea for feature he feels really strong about and feels "ubuntu's future will depend on it". So he submits his idea to the dev-pledgebank. A few days later Michael, a developer, responds and posts that he's willing to implement this feature and says he wants 100 karma-coins for it. Jantje pledges 50 karma-coins. A few other users pledge the rest of the required amount. Michael starts implementing the feature. When the implementation is finished Jantje and the other users get the karma-coins subtracted from their accounts.
• Pietje is a developer and has several feature-proposals he wants to implement but he has only limited time because he is a volunteer. He wants to know about which features users feel strongest. He submits his feature-proposals to the dev-pledgebank and asks 100 karma-coins for these features. Pietje sorts the priority of his feature proposals according to the pledges he receives.
• update use cases. use motu as an example with currency : bugs.

Scope

Design

Some possible ways of payment :

• karma (users get virtual money in proportion to the amount of karma they have and can spend this to ideas on the pledgebank. They can only pledge for ideas if they have more than 0 karma-coins. Users can't retract their pledge once the developer starts implementing the feature. When the implementation of the feature is finished the users get the karma-coins subtracted from their account)
• wiki contribution
• triaging bugs
• feedback/testing of a particular feature or package
• ....

Some possible ways of realizing such a system :

• subforum on the ubuntuforums (easy for users, developers might not like it)
• dedicated website (more control over features and quicker to realise than launchpad)
• integrated in launchpad somehow (all developers and a lot of users have already launchpad accounts. would probably take a long time before we have it)

Implementation

Outstanding Issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Some notes :

• feature requests by users need a spec
• example pledgebank which seems to work : pledgebank.org
• karma-coins might not work because karma is not worth the same to everyone
• users should pledge to make contributions which are relevant to developers (bugs triaging for example)
• advantages over bounties : don't handle money, multiple pledges
• corey is afraid this won't work
  • quality of the contributors
  • mentoring costs much time
• trialling :
  • trial could potentially be done on wiki (easy and fast to implement)
  • try for motu (universe,multiverse) first. currency : triaging bugs,package testing
  • start with finding a couple of motus who are willing to work
  • start with feature requests
  • if trial works out roll to other projects
  • this will partly be user education
  • only Ubuntu Members can make requests but everyone can digg them ???? maybe too little Ubuntu Members
  • mentoring aspect : build processes : "I will learn to triage bugs and then triage X bugs"

CategorySpec