Bounty Program

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Revision as of 19:20, 21 May 2013 by Cstim (talk | contribs) (Start Working)
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This page collects ideas for a potential bounty program within GnuCash.

Goals

*DRAFT* The goal of the GnuCash Bounty Program "GCBoP" is to make good use of some of our available donation money, specifically for the following aspects:

  • Get some issues fixed that have been a pain for many users but somehow were not interesting enough for developers previously
  • Attract new contributors by rewarding them for working on those issues
  • Stimulate current contributors to take on issues that remain open for too long
  • Experiment with this sort of bounty program in an Open Source project

Summary

*DRAFT* The GCBoP program puts a bounty on the completion of any of the tasks that are listed as Eligible Tasks below, for any contributions received between June 1 and July 26, 2013.

Some of the current developers will be act as Evaluators. As soon as some contributor sends in a patch that completes a task, one evaluator from our Pool of Evaluators will evaluate this contribution and decide whether a task is "done" so that the bounty is paid.

See How does it work? below for the full explanation of the program.

Eligible Tasks

Bugzilla

DRAFT The following items from Bugzilla are tasks whose completion will be rewarded by a $200 bounty (or 160 EUR):

  • 514492 Win32: Crash when loading data file with invalid txn dates
  • 669964 Importing log file from a transaction that moves money between mutual funds creates a brokentransaction
  • 672595 If the data file is not saved when the new file wizard terminates, no confirmation is issued if you exit gnucash
  • 678103 Crash when creating new invoice
  • 691587 Crash while loading corrupted .gnucash/stylesheet-2.0

Criterion for choosing those tasks: They have severity CRITICAL and remained opened for quite some time already.

Watch out: Your contribution must be prepared for the SVN "trunk" branch. Even though some of the bugreports are for the 2.4 branch, you must make sure to prepare your bugfix so that it can be applied to the "trunk" branch.

Uservoice

DRAFT Also, the following items from http://gnucash.uservoice.com/ are tasks whose completion will be rewarded by a $200 bounty (or 160 EUR):

Criterion for choosing those tasks: Those are the Top Ten feature requests by count of the user's votes. (Excluding the "declined" ones due to the immense structural changes they require.) And yes, they are not easy to do. That's the whole point of the GCBoP program.

Watch out: Some of the Uservoice tasks might require major structural changes in the gnucash code base. If you decide to work on this task, make sure to discuss your proposed structural changes early enough (!) on the gnucash-devel mailing list. Only this way you can ensure to have your solution accepted later. Otherwise you risk to have your contribution refused if it doesn't meet the majority of the GnuCash developers' ideas about the development of the GnuCash code structure!

Pool of Evaluators

*DRAFT* The following developers are available as evaluators to decide whether a task is done:

  • John Ralls <jralls@ceridwen.us>
  • Christian Stimming <christian@cstimming.de>
  • Geert Janssens <geert@kobaltwit.be>
  • Derek Atkins <warlord@mit.edu>

How does it work?

Start Working

*DRAFT* If you want to work on any of the eligible tasks, you can start right away by checking the information provided in the bugzilla item or uservoice item.

As soon as you start working on any of the tasks, we strongly encourage you to add a short comment in the respective bugzilla item so that others are notified about your ongoing work and upcoming contribution. This is the best you can do to avoid unnecessary competition.

Please make sure to work on the SVN "trunk" branch! Programmers new to Gnucash may find Development helpful, as might the Design and API Documentation and C API.

If you have technical questions on the GnuCash code base, do not hesitate to ask on the gnucash-devel Mailing List. But please keep in mind: This is not a mentoring situation. Patch submitters are expected to have sufficient skill in C or Scheme to accomplish the task with only code and design review as feedback. If the evaluators had time to teach you how to fix the bug, they would have done it themselves already.

Submit Contribution

*DRAFT* As soon as you have a code patch ready, attach it as a patch to the indicated Bug report.

Editorial Note: Surely some of the UserVoice items already have Feature Requests on them. For those that don't we should write one and in each case include to the on the list above so that there's no question which bug gets the patches for each item. We should add the evaluators to the CC list (or add a phony email that all of the evaluators can "follow") so that the evaluators get bugmail whenever there's a change on one of the bugs. Alternatively, each evaluator can adopt a couple of bugs and add himself as a CC on it. --JR

As the GCBoP program runs for a limited time, only patches that arrive between June 1 and July 26, 2013 are considered for a bounty. This is a hard dead line: If the final patch to complete the task does not arrive before July 26, 2013 (midnight EST), the work will not be considered for a bounty payment. Be sure to get your patch submitted early enough so that if further work is required there's time to submit corrections.


Evaluation

One of the people from the pool of evaluators will review the patch within 48 hours. Be sure to notice if it's marked "needs work": That means that you need to work on it some more and submit a new patch (don't forget to select the old one in the "obsoletes" list). Respond to any questions quickly. The *final* patch must be submitted before the deadline in order for you to get the bounty. Either the evaluator or original poster must have confirmed that it fixes the bug, and the evaluator must agree that it is an acceptable solution acceptably written and ready to commit. The confirmation and acceptance may take place after the deadline so long as the patch submitted before the deadline is satisfactory.

If there isn't feedback on your contribution within 48 hours, please mention it on the gnucash-devel Mailing List.

Evaluator Decision

*DRAFT* Once the evaluator decides the task is completed, the payment can be sent and we will contact you about the details. If the evaluator decides the task is not yet completed, more work is needed from you.

Disagreement Resolution

*DRAFT* Here's how we resolve a potential disagreement: If you disagree with the evaluation and think your contribution does complete the task, you may request evaluation from a second evaluator of our pool of evaluators. Please indicate so on the respective bugzilla entry. If the second evaluator confirms the non-completion of the task, this is our final response and no bounty will be paid unless the additional work is done.

If the second evaluator comes to a different conclusion than the first one, a third evaluator will be asked to look on the task as well. After the third evaluator gave his vote, the majority of those three votes are our final response.

Only patches that arrive before July 26, 2013 are considered for a bounty. The evaluation process itself may take longer than the deadline, but the patch for the final completion must have arrived before.