The pros, cons and alternatives to financial rewards in an open source project

Here's another blog post that started life as a response to a private email Jeremy Davis (JedMeister on the forums) sent me regarding various things we could try to recruit more developers as TurnKey contributors:

TurnKey 13.0 ready for community development

Want to roll your own Debian Wheezy based images? You're in luck because we just finished upgrading TurnKey's build chain, including new versions of TKLDev and TurnKey Core ready for download.

Meet Basil Kurian - 2nd place in TurnKey's first community development contest

Last week we finally published our interview with Adrian Moya, who won first place in the TurnKey community development contest. Basil won the respectable 2nd place and though we didn't know it at the same, more of his contributions would make it into the TurnKey library when we more than doubled it in the TurnKey 12 release.

Meet Adrian Moya - winner of TurnKey's first community development contest

Two years ago Adrian Moya won the first TurnKey community development contest. We decided it would be a good idea to interview him so the community would get to know him better. Unfortunately we made the foolish mistake of deciding to postpone the interview until his submissions made it into the TurnKey library as official appliances. In retrospect I think it would have been best if we did the interview right after Adrian won the contest. Hindsight is always 20/20.

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The curious case of Jeremy Davis (AKA JedMeister)

Ah, it's that special time of year again. People all over the world are getting into the holiday spirit. Celebrating the good parts of human nature. Trying to be just a bit nicer to other people. Buying presents for friends and family.

I'm Jewish and live in Israel so I'm stuck with Hannuka. Which I'm pretty sure sucks compared to Christmas. Most Israelis don't really know what they're missing, but I lived long enough in the US as a kid to know better. I'm not talking about any of the religious stuff. What I miss is the atmosphere. Good will and holiday cheers to all! Ho ho ho!

An experiment: gaming Slashdot's moderation system

Or: why moderation systems are trickier than they look.

Understanding the dynamics of online communities is one of my pet interests, so as a regular reader of Hacker News, I took notice when Paul Graham started experimenting recently in an attempt to stave off the gradual but unmistakable decline (AKA redditization) of what used to be my favorite online community after TurnKey.

The discussion inspired me to write a blog post about an experiment I tried a while back at my other geek haunt - Slashdot. Just to throw in my two cents.

In theory comment moderation systems are democratic and promote a high signal to noise ratio. But I've long suspected them of promoting group-think and being easy to game once you understand a little bit about the dynamics at play.

Announcing the winners of the first TurnKey development contest

Ladies and gentlemen, by now you are all shuddering in anticipation, dying to find out who won the very first TurnKey appliance development contest... in the history of the universe!

The stakes couldn't be higher. In truth, all three of our winners will lavish in (varying proportions of) unending fame and riches, but only one man will get the exotic, elusive embodiment of the Django pony goddess. Oh ye most blasphemous infidel will ask, why thee persists in worshiping a pony, thus pink and plush. Hush I say, tis not any earthly pony we worship, but the very symbol of the holy bond that ties all open source communities together. So say we all!

Meet Rik Goldman

Rik Goldman is the English and Info Systems teacher that led a team of six high school students to help develop 3 new TurnKey Linux appliances for Ampache, LimeSurvey and Elgg.

TKLPatch summer contest summary: let the judging begin!

It all started with a happy accident

I have a confession to make. This contest, which is directly fueling the largest expansion of the TurnKey library since the project started, is a happy accident. It wasn't something we planned. It wasn't on our summer todo list. It was just one of those unexpected, spontaneous ideas that light up the inside of your brain like a flash bulb, and demand you take action. Or else! (you won't get any sleep)

Back in June we had just launched the TurnKey Hub and were getting ready to focus all our energies on releasing TKLBAM. I logged into PayPal and noticed our donated beer budget had a sad little beer belly. It was just sitting there, giving me an accusing look. I felt guilty. Surely all those people who donated expected we would put these funds to better use. That's when it hit me. It was too much to buy beer, but not so much that we couldn't risk it all on a fun experiment...

I talked it over with Alon and on an impulse we decided to do a contest, but not just any contest. A wild and wet summer open source bonanza! With ponies!

What happened next took us both by surprise.

Ask us anything

We're going to be doing a series of interviews with prominent TurnKey community members so we figured it would make sense to do an interview with the founders of TurnKey (that's us!).

Interviewing ourselves is a bit weird, so instead we're inviting the TurnKey community to propose the questions which we'll answer in a separate blog post.

So... ask us anything!

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