Apple Gifts Top WebKit Contributors with MacBooks

soundofthemoon writes "Just nine months ago, Apple started the WebKit Open Source Project. In that time, contributors have added some significant improvements to WebKit (and thus Apple's Safari browser). Today Apple gave their open source contributors a big thank-you, including rewarding the top contributors with some nifty goodies: 'As a thank you, we are giving MacBook Pro computers to twelve of our top contributors. We've also invited five of them to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference 2006 on Apple's dime.' Looks like donating your time isn't a thankless job anymore."

Comments

Obvious

[Bombula]

Shoot me for stating the obvious, but this sets a good example for other companies to follow, not just in tech but across all industries.

Re:Obvious

[asliarun]

This is different. Agreed, internal competition can actually damage morale in a company. However, what Apple has done is reward open source contribution for individuals who didn't expect the reward in the first place. This is a good thing, as it encourages open-source hackers by giving them recognition as well as by giving them an unexpected reward. Everybody likes to get recognized and rewarded, especially for something that they take intellectual pride in. Hats off to the people who take the time off from their regular work and participate in such projects, simply because they want other people to benefit and learn from their skills and contributions. They thoroughly deserve such rewards.

Back to your example, where your company screwed up was in the fact that they confused incentive/recognition with unhealthy internal competition. It takes a very good people manager to instil a culture of competitiveness while making sure that it doesn't get degenerated into a political dog-eat-dog culture. The first encourages employees to benchmark themselves against their (better) peers and helps them pull up their socks when they feel they're sliding. The key here is that the manager should balance out the weaker employees' efforts with the company's goals, and make sure that they too are recognized and rewarded, along with the star performers. The second, OTOH, makes the weaker contributors feel a sense of futility, which makes them resort to cheating or give up the race. In my experience, i've met very very few people managers who can pull off this balancing act with success.

You have a valid point that all contributors should be rewarded and duly recognized. However, the key contributors also need to be rewarded more than the others, for that is the essence of meritocracy.

Re:Verbing nouns: Gah.

[SurgeonGeneral]

Definitions are interesting, however it is the etymology of the word that will explain to the parent why his anger at the use of "gift" as a verb is a mistake.

Gift is a word that is originally derived from the ancient German word geban - which, incidently, is a verb. The word grew to be a noun, but kept its verb meaning as well.

The word gift has been used for a long time now as a verb in legal proceedings. When a person bequeths objects to people in a will, it generally is referred to as gifting. That meaning of the word has recently raised its head in major media where it seems to be a "new" use of the word, when actually it is only new to you.