On 12/05/2013 07:40 AM, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:
Hi all,
During the last days, the openSUSE Team has proposed several changes in the openSUSE processes and tools: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2013-11/msg00920.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2013-12/msg00044.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2013-12/msg00132.html
The main goal of this mail is to present another idea that was already discussed during the recent openSUSE Summit: the Karmafication of the openSUSE infrastructure. People there liked the idea and some related topics have already been raised in the last days on both Factory and Project mailing lists, so we bring the idea here for wider debate and especially to get input from you all.
The "Karma" idea has been around for at least 3 years most likely longer. So far we had no one interested in doing the work that needs to be done. A good start is Athanasios' work presented at oSC13 "How active are openSUSE members , developers and contributors?" (https://conference.opensuse.org/osem/conference/osc2013/proposal/45) In order to hand out Karma points contributions have to measured ;)
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A big benefit of Karmafication over other ways of reaching the same goals is that most alternatives require making rules, commitees and bureaucracy and require much more work.
Well, you still need rules/guidelines unless you make it really simple, every contribution is 1 Karma point. But then that contribute a whol package get 1 Karma point ns the person the fixes a spelling mistake also gets 1 Karma point. Not that fixing spelling mistakes in the wiki isn't important, it just takes a lot less effort. This implies that the amount of Karma points handed out for contributions will need to be graded ins some way, maybe on a scale from 0 to 100 and someone will have to assign values for areas/categories. Assigning Karma points for "day in and out" work is probably somewhat tricky, but doing the same for bugs will be even more tricky. For bugs a Karma system implies that a review has to take place that assigns Karma points for fixing this particular bug.
Soft motivation through Karmafication brings us these benefits in a much nicer and more flexible way, hopefully without the downsides of rigorous rules. See this video for some insights in rules vs 'soft nudging': http://vimeo.com/54434167
What do you think about the whole idea?
Go for it.
Would you like openSUSE to be the first distribution with a karma-driven development process?
NO. I think a Karma system would be nice to have but I would not be in favor of the "Karma system" driving the development process. Later, Robert
-- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead Public Cloud Architect rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org