[gentoo-dev] Re: One request for the next SoC: non already-devs students

[flameeyes@gmail.com (Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò)]

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Richard Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> writes:

> Do we inspire them by telling them that anybody who has made this choice
> in the past is not to be rewarded financially for doing so?

This brings up a different point of view too. Why should just somebody
be rewarded financially and not someone else? Why only people who are
still in school, and not people who left school? I don't even want to
think what might happen if there was something like Debian's DunkTank
flame in here.

> A bigger concern is this.  Which is better for gentoo?  Taking somebody
> who has never worked on gentoo and paying them money to possibly
> accomplish something on the project, or taking somebody who is already
> doing quite a bit and pay them so that they can accomplish even more
> without the distraction of a day job?

Do you think that $4500 (which is, by now, less than €3000) during the
summer will stop anybody already contributing from finding a day job? I
sincerely don't think so.

It does, though, help new people to _try_ working on Free
Software. Students paid for SoC don't need to find a temporary job for
that summer to build up experience (which is what I suppose most
students would like to do, you can't expect a huge pay for three months
of work _in the summer_), it's a good pay, for three months of work, but
it's far from being a pay good enough for anybody to actively stop
looking for a job. They will have to understand, though, that Gentoo is
not a job and you won't end up always being paid to help that.

Sincerely, I find the "without the distraction of a day job" argument to
be pretty silly. How can an eventual, possible, not sure at all, and for
sure not stable, check of €3000 once an year stop anybody from finding a
dayjob? It's like counting on winning the lottery twice an year to
sustain yourself. I live with my parents still, in the past years I had
unstable jobs (paying more than €3000) during the start of the year and
then had almost nothing between spring and winter, I have no monthly
expenses, and I still struggle to find money to buy a new box.

It might be an added incentive to get experience in Free Software rather
than as a third-grade programmer helper in a small software company with
most of the stable programmers taking weeks off for the summer, but for
sure can't replace a stable job.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/

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