I just saw a great initiative that I simply had to share.
Full disclosure, never met the guy nor seen the site that launched this one, but here it is the idea. Alex Pott signed up for weekly contributions for Drupal. I found that through a tweet by Robert Douglass, a great team Drupal guy:
https://twitter.com/robertDouglass/status/366176381685608449
You know, the contributing discussions around the WordPress core are quite popular and even intense at times, particularly due to several reasons:
- it requires a significant amount of time to get into the project history and infrastructure
- it takes a while to to get a patch or a solution reviewed and eventually accepted by the core ninjas
- it is time consuming to be active contributor. Like, really consuming.
A few companies in the market pay people to contribute part-time or full time to employees or consultants in order to give back to the community. I know that SiteGround for example are quite active, working on their managed WordPress environment, sponsoring WordCamps and meetups (our 10th anniversary meetup was fully sponsored by them with more than 100+ attendees, bbq, beer and cakes available for everyone) and also contributing code back to the community.
How about all the other engineers, designers, writers, translators and others who would like to contribute, but can’t spend too many hours as bills are waiting at the door at the beginning of the month?
That idea of companies sponsoring experts on a weekly basis is brilliant. You know why?
- There are hundreds of companies doing WordPress full-time and getting paid thanks to the platform
- There are companies getting their sites built by agencies for a lot less than the market standards thanks to the platform
Just as many of us try to donate to Open Source projects, help with code or documentation (or support), trying to keep the project up for as long as possible and be grateful to their labor that is saving time and getting paychecks, companies should be initiative and run similar programs. It’s clear that most agencies (the small ones especially) can’t pay a full-time expert to contribute back, but good karma would definitely allow them to dedicate 100 or 200 bucks a month to sponsor a contributor, right?
It doesn’t hurt the budget as much if you do your living with WordPress and it allows for several companies to team up and “hire” part-time or full-time people to give back to awesome projects such as WordPress.
