FOSS.IN: A report

Posted Dec 9, 2005 18:51 UTC (Fri) by markc (subscriber, #4419) [Link]

> It's a good thing if more companies start
> employing Free Software developers and also
> allow them to contribute to the community.

FWIW I have tried to engage 1 or 2 developers to help me (solo, not a
company) to complete projects in various stages of completion that are or
will become open source. As a reasonably well paid westerner I can afford
to pass on $4 USD per hour for part time, leading to possible full time,
employment for "the right" Indian FLOSS developer, if I can find one!!! I
was blown away by Jons' comments about the folks needing full guidance
because what I found is that it was going to take more of my time to
outline what I wanted done than than what it was worth in my time, plus
paying money, than any return on investment and contribution back from the
2 "workers" I have interacted with (I have less than zero management
experience). I mean, I could do the work I needed doing myself and
probably quicker, in most cases, if I detailed all the steps required by
the Indian hackers. If I was that organised I wouldn't need any help. Yes,
I was perplexed at the lack of direction when the offer was "there's 10
hours payment and the SVN checkout URL, now do whatever you want to do to
improve the code"... nuh, doesn't work like that... I would have to
provide very specific step by step guidelines for them to follow.

I thought I was dealing with individual personal traits but this article
indicates it's a national tendency. Now I know that I can adjust and allow
for it. Thanks Jon!

It has occurred to me that one way to overcome a few of the Indian
specific shortcomings outlined in both the article and the comments is if
some of us "westerners" could pool our financial resources and pay for
groups or "cells" of Indian FLOSS workers to co-work on specific project
targets. Ideally with enough pooled funds to pay for a room with an ADSL
connection and one full-time "manager" with a budget to pay for interested
FLOSS folks to show up and put in hacking time. I found paying upfront for
a $40 USD block of 10 hours was a good compromise between being fair to
the recipient, by giving them a reasonable chance to do a "micro job" and
prove themselves worthy enough to get a crack at the next 10 hour payment,
and, the payer (me so far) not risking too much money if the remote worker
just takes off with the payment never to be heard from again. Because of
the constrained resources in India (like bandwidth and computing power) it
does occur to me that some kind of pooling on both ends would help improve
the situation... for those of us wanting specific work done and for those
in India willing to do the work but held back by both a cultural trends
and available resources. 4 folks in the west contributing the value of 2
dozen beers per week would be full time employment for one Indian, and,
giving them the opportunity to be so working on FLOSS. 40 of us doing so
for 10 workers in the same village or area could possibly make a profound
difference to the whole community in that particular area as well as
seriously kick along various FLOSS projects that the rest of the world
benefits from, forever.