Debian bug squashing can be rewarding

Dear fellow developers and contributors,

My publisher, Open Source Press [0], and I were pondering ways to
help the F/OSS community (and Debian in particular) over a beer the
other day, and the following idea is the result:

0. http://www.opensourcepress.de

We are announcing a bug squashing period, starting now, and ending
14 Dec 2005, 11:59 CET. Squashing a bug gets you a certain number of
points (depending mostly on triviality and severity). At the end of
the three weeks, the 25 bug squashers with the highest score shall
receive a copy of my book, The Debian System [1], donated by the
publisher. If this turns out to be a success, we'll
lather-rinse-repeat sometime soon.

1. http://debiansystem.info

Bug squashing is to be done according to the rules listed on the
wiki [2]. In particular, everyone is expected to make proper use of
usertags to communicate to others that s/he is working on
a particular bug [3]. If you are working on a bug, you are expected
to send status updates to the bug report at least once in four days,
or someone else may announce the intent to lock the bug and take it
over after 24 hours. Fixing a bug also involves augmenting the bug
report with any relevant information as you go along, and testing
the fix with which you came up.

2. http://wiki.debian.org/BSP
3. http://xrl.us/hhuu

Points will be given to those whose contributions fix a bug. A bug
will be considered fixed if a patch addressing the problem has been
sent to the BTS and the package's maintainer has not vetoed the
patch within five days. Please do not actually close bugs in the BTS
(unless you really know what you are doing). Points will only be
awarded to patches for bugs which have been reported before this
announcement (but you are, of course, welcome to fix any bug -- if
it's obvious you aren't trying to cheat and you are otherwise very
actively fixing bugs, you may even get points for those too).

After submitting a patch to the BTS, please send a short note to
book-bsp ät pobox.madduck.net with the bug number in the subject,
and from the email address you used to interact with the BTS. In the
message, list any contributors who have helped with the bug, as well
as an approximation of the time each of you spent on fixing this
bug. Also, document how you have tested your patch.

The amount of points to be awarded depends on the severity of the
bug report, as well as the triviality of the patch you came up with.
Put differently: while a one-line patch for a wishlist bug might get
you 1 point, I could award 100 points for a clean yet elaborate
patch to an important bug. Bonus points can be given if you provide
reasonable proof of thorough testing of your fix (you could use
test-driven development techniques... [4], also see [5]), ideally by
a third party. Please be aware that bugs fixed by the reporter
him/herself will be especially scrutinised.

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/11/msg00072.html

Anyway, there are no strict rules for the amount of points a patch
will get you. In fact, I reserve the right to announce the scores
only after the end of the bug squashing period, and I will not
answer questions about scores, or address complaints from people who
think they have not received enough. However, I shall act as
objectively as possible, fair, and honest; for that, I give you my
word. I realise this is sketchy and if you don't trust me on this,
it's your choice not to participate -- there is no point to argue at
this stage. If you have a better suggestion, I would be interested
in trying it the next time 'round. Maybe we can establish a good
scoring system for the future, but at the moment, no such system
exists.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to
speak up (Reply-To set). Do note, however, that my tendonitis forces
me to take things slow. For this reason, I would like to apologise
in advance should the evaluation of all your contributions extend
into the new year.

Thanks to Markus Wirtz of Open Source Press for supporting this
idea, and to Steve Langasek and Frank Lichtenheld for their advice.

-- 
 .''`.     martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org>
: :'  :    proud Debian developer and author: http://debiansystem.info
`. `'`
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing a system
 
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