Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>]

Andrew Stitt wrote:
> 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.

I think this is an awesome idea. When CafePress traffic picks up we may
even be able to use that money to fund a yearly contest such as this. ;)
If possible, I would prefer the bugs to first be picked from those filed
against stable, then stable-rc, and finally test if we still need more
to fill the bucket (with the above stipulations about black magic,
INVALID, etc. still in place).

We may want to give them two weeks, since they will be submitting their
fixes for review, which may slow them down if the reviewers are busy for
a day or so (or it's a complex fix).

-sandalle

-- 
Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us                  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/