Josh_Mac wrote:I have a question just kinda for whoever was in charge as far as accountability goes.
Reading the archived version of the forum (I hope you guys don't mind; considering it wasn't removed I assume it's not an issue), I notice you guys set a lot of "arbitrary deadlines" and such. Were these literally just like "hey let's have such-and-such done by X date," or was there some penalty for not meeting the deadlines? I ask because I'm in a similar situation, with a group of people working non-profit on a similar project. However, there's not really any motivator to make people meet deadlines, save personal drive, and I'm curious how you guys made sure everyone was on top of things.
Thanks in advance!
Deadlines don't work. We toyed with a few ideas during the development of KS, but nothing stuck and we pretty much gave up on artificial motivators by the time there were a couple of years left.
In the end, there are only three things that'll motivate a developer - personal motivation that's up to themselves, a paycheck, or standing behind them with a gun. KS was free, and to my knowledge at least didn't end up with weaponry pointed at anyone to work (even if a few developers would dearly have liked to book a flight and done so for some), so that leaves option 1. Over the years, we developed a sense of duty to each other to pull through, and between many of us there was also a sense of friendship, and that's what got most to do their stuff.
Find a talented developer, make sure they're someone you can at least tolerate working beside, and hope they have the internal motivation to work. That's all you can do, and is also why the vast majority of free projects fail.