Gauging Interest for a Volunteer Auxiliary Dev Team

Disagree. Back when Inprise was still called Borland, their aspiring devs had to start in tech support. They wouldn't put a developer with years of experience on tech support but the new grads always started there.

Just because companies do that doesn't mean it is the correct thing to do or that it doesn't cost them quality developers who refuse to do tech support.

It doesn't mean it's the incorrect approach, either. Some of those tech support guys went on to become highly regarded devs and, some cases, authors.

Oh, there are some very big projects that are open source. However I don't think any EverQuest player would be very happy with a new update to the game - even for a minor fix coming out every 3-6 months. LOL

Open source is not even close to the same thing. In an open source project, nearly all the devs are volunteers. The system is set up for that. There might be a few paid staff but nothing like a commercial company. I'd like to hear of a commercial product that combines paid and volunteer devs. I'm genuinely curious. There has to be a threshold, so name me a company with revenue of $50m or more that has a mix of paid and volunteer developers. I don't mean you specifically, Smokezz. I mean the group.

As a professional software developer who works at a large enterprise with closed source software, just off the top of my head here would be significant problems with this idea:

1. While we attempt to wall certain data off as much as possible, there is always some level of exposure of customer data to people with developer access. I would be surprised if this was not true almost everywhere. We have all kinds of legal things we have to do in terms of that customer data, including providing regular training and such on various State privacy policies etc. Having non-employees involved increases risks here and you do not have the same managerial oversight over what volunteers are doing.

2. Our source code is proprietary and corporate trade secrets are embedded throughout. It would be a significant risk to our business to let non-employees have access to the source code.

3. Having our source code gives you significant understanding of how our IT systems work, and volunteers whom we would never be able to vet as fully as employees would represent a serious security risk to the organization in having access to all this information without any of the controls typical of the employer/employee relationship.

4. There are labor laws in a number of Sates which would make it difficult or impossible to have volunteers doing work of this nature unpaid.

5. We vet employees to at least do some semblance of investigation into making sure they are not risks to the company's reputation. This would be significantly more difficult with volunteers. We can all imagine the sort of embarrassing things a person ostensibly representing a company might do, and if that person is a volunteer there is significantly less control over what they do.

That's just literally me sitting here and thinking off the cuff, I suspect if I took this idea to one of our HR or legal team members they would have a mountain of additional concerns.

It's usually not a direct relationship. If you open source a single well defined software component and others happen to contribute to it then you're benefiting from their labor with little to no cost and there's no violation of any laws. Plenty of companies try to do this but what often happens is that nobody has any interest in what was open sourced.

Or you pay an employee to work on that open project. Which can often be done with short term contractors who are given limited to no access to your company's resources. You can pay someone to do nothing but contribute to the public project and require them to use their own hardware, etc.

Actually having volunteers act as full time employees without pay is kind of a weird idea that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

A little bit creativity is needed for being able to use free ressources without getting into conflict with law which mostly is based on more or less hidden and implied contracts. DBG does use free unpaid ressources already which is absolutely fine to me. Every bug report and feedback is actually the unpaid work of others.

I could imagine an open source platform where players/artists do upload 3D zone models and 3D objects (houses, trees, NPCs, etc.), graphical effects, music, sound and textures. Maybe even hosted by DBG itself . DBG devs should be allowed to use and embed them into the game. Maybe for a donation or price but that is optional.

I suspect this is part of the complications with Player Studio and why Daybreak didn't continue it.

As a US citizen living and working in Canada, I have encountered a lot of complications with international labour laws and taxes that baffles those who aren't sitting across a border like I am.

Face it, our only hope is one of us winning the Powerball and taking DBG private.

Yup. First thing I would do is make ttobey apologize for insulting the original froglok models. It really grinds my gears. Follow up that with a true Guk expansions. Frogs on Ice, Moon Frogs, Frogs of Power, etc.

"Tech support is beneath me."

- "I don't think this position is a good fit for you. Good luck in your job search."

Expanding one's understanding of the technology stack in a given organization is almost never a waste of time. Long run it can pay dividends. Us Boomers call it a 'good rounding'.

That isn't what I said at all and trying to say that tech support is the same as development isn't an accurate statement. There are plenty of people who are good at one but not the other. Just because you understand and can develop on the tech stack for a company doesn't mean you have the skills to work tech support.

Call them interns then or hire them as independent contractors.

Most of these concerns are applicable to any new hire in a typical American California based company. When you work for a company you are have to go through a vetting process, a criminal background check and you have to sign an NDA etc.

Existing employees in any company are just as much of a risk for stealing or sharing IP and trade secrets as new employees.

As has been pointed out calling someone an intern doesn't mean you can get away with not paying them.

That may be what you meant. But it's not what you said.

For the record, you said "developers who refuse to do tech support." I understand this is part of a larger conversation, but there's only so much nuance to this phrasing.

To your point, whether they are good at tech support is irrelevant if the purpose behind hiring new developers is to familiarize themselves with the tech stack. Asking people to support applications and technology they may one day be writing is invaluable insight to both the consumers of technology and the providers of technology.

Cheers, Waring.

What glaring faults? I think you're being a tad hyperbolic Frank. Sometimes the glass is half full and not half empty.

I'm saddened that you do not trust your fellow forum posters and think so poorly of them. Out of curiosity, would you also be in that 99% or are you in the 1% of those that can be trusted?

Thankfully Darkpaw doesn't share your bleak opinion of your fellow forum contributors and encourages players to post on these forums. If you type in /feedback in the EQ client this is what you see:



The official policy of the forums shows that Daybreak Games values the opinions of their players discussion:

The purpose of these Forums and other Official Daybreak Games-maintained communication channels is to create a positive and constructive atmosphere for discussion about games at Daybreak Games and topics meaningful to our communities.
As I mentioned previously, the auxiliary dev team would be working under the strict supervision of the existing dev team and they would report to them. Your fears that they would be running wild and "destroying" EQ is unwarranted.

By all accounts, the EQ dev team is short-staffed and over-worked. My proposal is a pro-active and out of the box attempt to address that deficiency by bringing in more talented people to help them. Menial dev tasks could be given to the new people, which would allow the current dev team to work on higher level creative tasks.

Any initiative takes work and resources to make happen. I'd be very interested in hearing if you or anyone else has alternative solutions on how to help Darkpaw with their staffing issues.

And I am saying just because some companies follow that practice doesn't mean that it is a good idea that they should be doing in the first place. If they do that they are likely missing out on plenty of good talent that has no intention of ever working tech support. And just because you work tech support on a product doesn't mean you will learn anything useful about the tech stack to help you develop it.

I'm going to preface the following by stating that this is just my opinion. Sometimes it's beneficial to state it from the onset. /shrug

If they were even to entertain this idea, I believe that a publicly traded company would need to compensate anyone working on the product, if only for accounting purposes. As a fictional investor, I wouldn't want "Joe Dirt" working on any investment that I'm holding out of principle alone.

My confidence level in the business would turn to Mortimer levels (old movie reference). QA would be acceptable to me, however. That's how they originally promoted people to dev jobs according to Shawn and a few of his guests. Interesting channel for EQ heads by the way.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q

There was a poster who wanted help setting up a Gofund me for the devs about a year ago. The proposal was for the Devs to make content outside of regular business hours to make extra money. I know this is tangential to the OP. As far as I can tell they had good intentions, but I don't believe that would work with their business model anymore than this suggestion.

Even with all the best intentions, us fans need to recognize that this company/team is listed on the NY stock exchange, and they are not a homebrew gaggle of programming enthusiasts.
https://g.co/finance/EG7:STO