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Paying for Volunteers?

Posted by Cliff on from the is-it-really-volunteering-if-you-pay-them dept.

E1ven asks: "As the Head Producer of a moderate/early OSS game project, one of the constant questions is how to get quality people to volunteer time. One idea I've come up with is the concept of paying someone a small sum ($100/week?) to volunteer to work on the project. [Offering money will] make volunteering their time easier for them. I know that some projects, like Freenet, that already do this to some extent. However, I'm not sure on exactly how to go about it. I can't just advertise on Monster or Dice, can I? Does anyone have any advice they could offer on this subject? Has anyone gone through it?"

1 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. In short, I think you should share more plan. by Art+Popp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hit the web-site, and as other posters pointed out there is no download link, and there is no license.

    People who make Free/OpenSource software happen want some kind of guarantee that their contribution will go back to the community. The sincere promises that you're considering several licenses won't cut it with many folk. Once you have the license in place you can post your stuff. Till then you can't really post much because you can't specify the conditions underwhich it can be downloaded/used.

    One of the best ways an author knows what he might contribute to a project is downloading things and taking a look at the state of them. Whatever you've got will help this process along. Judging by the âoeStatusâ page at your site:

    We're going through, one scene, one act, at a time, to get the job done. This aren't going to change much from month to month, but I'll try to keep you posted.

    How about posting 2 completed scenes. I know it seems out of order to put finishing touches on 2 scenes when you have 70 to go, but it will let you share your vision with the gaming world and perhaps attract coders that didn't play the previous SpaceQuests.

    Regardless, give'em something, anything, and don't make them sign up as developers to get to it.

    Share the plan. Software development is a fairly quantifiable task these days. One thing that very much benefits a project is a clear development plan. I would suggest a unit of four hours resolution or better. If you make up a plan that starts with a list of features, and your story board, you should be able to map out the units of work needed to get it done. Miscellaneous tasks can be lumped together into four hour blocks but all the other coding tasks that bring about your story in an engine with the desired list of features should be included. This is a kind of super TODO list that will bring you three important advantatges:

    Parallelism: code and artistry that might not be necessary till the end scenes can be started by those with the talent early rather than waiting for the herd to get that scene.

    Progress indication: when you have the project mapped out into work units you can see/display/prove you're making progress even on weeks where all the progress was infrastructural, and didn't make any difference to the "scenes completed" counter. With the âoejust the end goalâ definitions, it's hard to see and share (as your status page would indicate).

    Basis for reward system: Completing blocks of work can both decide where the author's name appears in the credits, and place him/her properly in the reward system.

    As for the payment. I would highly recommend that you avoid letting money change hands in this. There are copyright/contract/wage/tax/underage/descriminatio n issues that you just don't want in your life.

    If the reward system were mine to structure first off I'd make sure that everyone knew that their code was freely contributed under the chosen license. The $100 a week you have available is more than enough to inspire some help. Over the next 3 months that's $1200. If your income is steady and you can put that aside, I would set up a reward system like this:

    The top 4 contributors get:
    --A Radeon 9500 128MB card. (totals 548)
    The next 4 get:
    --A CL Audigy Platinum card (totals 264)
    The next 4 get:
    --A Razor Boomslang (totals 168)
    Big reward totals: $980

    And everyone else who completes at least one âoeacceptedâ unit of work gets a free âoeI made Space Quest 7â t-shirt.

    I've helped plan a number of mediums scale software projects and would be glad to lend a hand. Cheers.