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  • From: Andrew Stitt <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [SM-Discuss] grimoire bug fixing contest
  • Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:56:58 -0700

We have many grimoire bugs piling up and not enough resources or
incentive from developers/users to help fix them all. As a result,
our release process is suffering. I had a thought to run a grimoire bug
fixing contest.

I have no idea if this will actually succeed or not, but I think it might,
and its worth a shot anyway. Might even be fun.

In short, contest participants race to fix some number of bugs, and the
winner gets a monetary prize. I will fund the prize, although others are
welcome to make the purse bigger.

havent decided if there should be seeparate contests for general-devs and
non-dev-users who are interested. I guess it depends on the lvel of interest.

The contest will go roughly as follows:

- The lead develoeprs will pick out a pool of bugs, (say) 300 that look
valid and non-trivial, but also fixable without too much black magic.
They'd also be on non-core spells (no glibc or linux-pam).

- Participants will register by a certain date, there would need to be
a minimum of say 5 participants.

- After registration completes the participants will take turns picking
bugs from the pre-approved pool until they all have (say) 20 bugs. This
ensures no one takes all the easy bugs and distribution is reasonably
fair.

- Participants will submit their fixes to a panel of judges (mainly
the leads) who then have some amount of time to accept or reject the
fix. Fixes will be held to the same standard of rigor as sm-commit. We
may also require some level of testing, say in prometheus.
(This all must be codified).

- Participants aren't allowed to resolve bugs "worksforme" or "invalid"
and submit them for acceptence. If they can't reproduce a bug they'll
return it to the bug pool and pick a different one.

- First person to get all their bug fixes accepted wins. There will also
be second or third place prizes.

- Contest lasts 1 week.

I think we should also require 3*(number of bugs participants must fix)
bugs fixed for the contest to be valid. This ensures we "get our money's
worth". Im thinking of putting up a 100 USD purse*, 50 35 and 15 USD as
prizes for the top three finishers.

Of course any users participating in the contest can be offered dev
access if their work is of sufficient quality.

Thoughts?

-Andrew

* I know many folks are in Europe, so convert currency as needed.




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