[Council] Re: [Board] incenting e2e development

[Alexander Gnauck]

after reading some articles from Peter's links about bounties i agree 
that code bounties are not the best solution.
Sponsoring a conference sounds very good to me, and also strengthens the 
community.
+1

We should setup a roadmap for development. Developers could start with 
XEP-0155, parts of XEP-0116 and all the dependencies. After Eric 
Rescorla has reviewed the encryption stuff then they can move forward 
with the rest.

Not sure if April or May is to early, but we need some pressure to get 
it done by the end of 2007.

Alex

Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> [Sent to board and council, cross-posting rights should be in order]
>
> While on a plane to Florida for VoiceCon, I've been reading cached web 
> pages and mailing list posts about ways to fund FOSS development.
>
> There seems to be consensus that code bounties are not the best 
> approach because it is difficult to properly scope them, developers 
> who don't receive bounties may be demotivated, etc.
>
> Project leaders on the foundations list and elsewhere feel that 
> "payment in kind" schemes are more successful than bounties. This 
> might include things like equipment, but for our purposes a better 
> example would be payment to attend a conference. So we might incent 
> developers to work on end-to-end encryption by holding a special 
> devcon. Unlike our talk-heavy "XMPP Summit", an e2e devcon would focus 
> on coding sprints and interop testing. Projects would need to get to a 
> certain point of viability in their e2e code before being invited to 
> the devcon (this could even be based on self-reports, given the high 
> level of trust in our community). One approach would be to hold two 
> such events, or to hold an online sprint (e.g., in April or May) 
> followed by an in-person devcon for those who complete the sprint.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Peter
>