Gregory Brown
2008-Mar-10 01:44 UTC
[ANN] Offering to work directly for the Ruby community!
Hi folks, I''ve been prone to having crazy ideas before, but this one is my latest. After posting a long, whimsical post on the O''Reilly blog about this, my friends have persuaded me to try this for real. If you haven''t read that post yet, it''s here: http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/03/id_love_to_quit_my_job_sort_of.html === Quick Project Summary == ***Through the donations of community members, I would like to put my commercial and personal software projects on the back burner for a prolonged period of time (3-6 months), and focus on working on open source projects that are of high importance to the majority of Rubyists.*** If you''ve already seen discussion of this idea elsewhere, and are just wondering where to donate, head to: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/571 Otherwise, if you still need convincing, read on: === Why does the open source Ruby community need some grassroots, non-commercial love? == The Ruby community suffers from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to open source software. It seems that countless hackers and the companies they work for are eagerly contributing new software, and working on shaking bugs out of old software. This on its own is a great reason to believe that Ruby will continue to be a serious contender for many different programming tasks, both in the commercial and hobbyist sectors. Still, there are complications. With the explosion of interest in Ruby and software written in it, the community is feeling growing pains at all levels, especially in our infrastructure that supports application development in Ruby. Though it''s relatively easy to find paid Rails work that allows you to contribute a plugin to the community now and again, it''s pretty hard to find a company that''d fund fixing the various bugs that have been reported with RubyForge, our central software repository. Though many Rubyists will seek 1.9 compliance in their greenfield projects, it''s unlikely that we''ll see large numbers of existing Ruby projects get fixed up in a short period of time without some external push. These are the kinds of things that casual hacking as well as commercial work don''t really answer, and this proposal aims to offer a solution to them. Put simply, I''d like to put my commercial work as well as my personal software projects on the back burner for several months, so that I can work on problems that are common among most Rubyists. My goal is to raise the funds necessary to do this from the community itself, and there are a number of reasons why I''d be a good candidate for this sort of thing. Ideally, I''d like to spend 3 to 6 months as an employee of J. Random Rubyist, working on projects that matter to me, but also matter to the many hard working, busy, and wonderful Ruby developers I''ve met over the last several years. == Why Me? = I can name a ton of Rubyists I''d say would be technically proficient and community centric enough to take on this kind of effort. However, I''ve been fortunate enough to have several unique experiences that make me confident that I could do some great work on something like this: * I have successfully participated as a Ruby Central Codefest Grant recipient in 2005 as well as a Google Summer of Code student in 2006 (Ruport). * I have been very active in the community, so my work and contributions can easily be reviewed by anyone who wishes to do so. I''ve spoken at a number of Ruby users groups and conferences, including RubyConf 2006 in Denver, CO. * I have a deep passion for working on open source software, and place this interest ahead of making boatloads of money. Though I expect to do some minimal commercial work during the duration of this project, I have no problem making this project my primary focus for a while. * My living expenses are relatively low, and I do not have a full-time job, a family to take care of, or any other major commitments that would take me away from dedicating time to a project like this. For the record, I have endless admiration and respect for the hackers out there who are ''doing it all'', though I don''t envy the complications that must arise from that. * I am very comfortable with candid, transparent discussions in public. This will be necessity for a project like this to succeed. Because of these reasons, I think I''m the right person for this job. I hope you do too. === Logistics == If you''re looking for the shiny stuff, such as the ideas for things I want to work on, skip to the section below here, but here a few important logistic details: 1) I need to make at least $500/wk to cover my living expenses. 2) I need to figure out whether I''ll be working on this project, and for how long, by April 1st. This will let me figure out how to re-arrange my commercial work so as to not conflict with this project. This means that I need to raise money rather quickly, just over 3 weeks remain from the time of this posting. 3) $500/wk is less than what I''d like to live on, and less than what I make. So I''ll accept donations up to $20000 for a 6 month period, even though $500/wk would put it at $13000. If I make less than that in donations by April 1st, and at least clear the cost of working two weeks, I have no problem working fewer weeks at $500/wk. This means that earlier donations will be ''sustaining the project'', and later donations will be ''supporting my comfort''. Though I would be quite happy to even be able to dedicate two weeks to this project, reaching the $20000 maximum would be phenomenal, as it''d make this hardly a sacrifice for me. 4) Until April 1st, this is pretty much a process open to change and community suggestions. Please join this mailing list and ask questions / make suggestions, whether or not you choose to donate. http://groups.google.com/group/rubymendicant === Project Ideas == Here are some of the ideas I''ve cooked up, and I''m open for more suggestions: = Ruby 1.9 Field Medic. Start with Ruport and tumble through dependencies, working on compatibility issues. From there, work on helping with 1.9 support where needed in projects like: ActiveRecord, mechanize, redcloth, Camping, Merb, hpricot, highline, and maybe others. I''ve not checked the 1.9 status of these projects, but I''m sure could come up with many more if time permitted. = A Six Month Nightmare with RubyForge. Tons of bug reports! Tons of feature requests! No one likes PHP. But RubyForge is driving me insane. I would be willing to fix it given the time and funding. Uncovering Hidden Gems I could request suggestions for various useful but under-documented or less well known Ruby libraries, either third party or stdlib, and write a large series of tutorials and quick references. The idea here is that it would hopefully result in a large amount of documentation being written, which would spark contributions to these many ''hidden gems'' in Ruby. = First class PDF support in Ruby. I''m currently maintaining PDF::Writer along with Mike Milner. The library implements most of the PDF spec, and is incredibly useful. However, it''s not very usable. It is slow, has API issues, and countless bugs. The current plan is to maintain the library making minor improvements when we can. A large time block would allow for something better: A fast, thin, pretty rewrite. This would go a long way to helping Ruby be a first choice for reporting software development. = From Lone Hacker to Community Leader. I could work with newer or shy developers to help them get acquainted with free software practices in general. I''d help people learn how to package gems, set up mailing lists, do sane release ** Please send me more ideas! ** === Summary / How To Help == If you''ve read through this long email and still want *more* detail, my ''official'' proposal is a bit longer and has some additional info: http://rubymendicant.wikidot.com/proposal If you''ve managed to get this far, you''re probably at least partially interested in this project, and the most straightforward way you could help is of course, make a donation: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/571 I''m suggesting that $50 is a good number to shoot for, because if I end up doing proportional voting for projects, that''s probably the amounts I''ll split them up into. Of course, I welcome anything folks wish to offer, so feel free to offer $5 or $500 if you wish. There are other ways you can help. This project will depend entirely on word of mouth and the support of the community. If you know my work, or just think I''m a good guy, please tell your friends. Blog posts linking to the proposal and donation page would be great. Finally, if you''re skeptical but have constructive criticism you can offer, or have ideas on how you think this should work, or are just generally curious, please join this mailing list and get involved: http://groups.google.com/group/rubymendicant Thank you for those who''ve read all the way to the end of this *long* email. I hope this project succeeds, and I look forward to working directly for J. Random Rubyist starting in mid April! -greg --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. 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