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As we have seen before, when something is offered for free in exchange for commits, you get a lot of low quality commits. Right now I see three pull requests:

As we have seen before, when something is offered for free in exchange for commits, you get a lot of low quality commits. Right now I see three pull requests: one that adds an echo statement to a build script, another that deletes a file they claim is not needed and one that renames a directory and changes some paths in the README.

riffraff 6y ago
those may be low effort, but if are they useful I think it's still a net good, since they would also be easy to review.
oriesdan 6y ago
This is also very efficient guerrilla marketing. Instead of asking users to tell their friends about your brand, you can make a lottery making them win t-shirts with your logo on it. They will be so happy to have won something they will wear it. In this link's case, if pine64 want to get people excited about that EVB and start hacking with it, it sounds like an efficient strategy. Whatever the real value of the commits are, it's the users who are committed :) At least, in this case, they ask for contributions on a repos they own.
detaro 6y ago
That's always gonna happen with giveaways, and 1000 meaningful submissions would be expecting a bit much, so it's clearly planned in (it's also a fairly cheap board, so "wasting" a bunch isn't so bad). Still builds hype, and it's their own repo, so they can manage it how they see fit and don't annoy any third-party that isn't benefiting.
LeonM 6y ago
> Right now I see three pull requests: one that adds an echo statement to a build script, another that deletes a file they claim is not needed and one that renames a directory and changes some paths in the README. Sure, some people aim at low hanging fruit. But remember that this challenge was just announced. Actual quality contributions take time. It'll be interesting to check again in a month or so, and see what has been committed.
regularfry 6y ago
There are a few more PRs now. The bigger problem I can see is that in a month's time there are going to be 1000 PRs that haven't been able to build on each other, and 20,000 merge conflicts to resolve.
bluGill 6y ago
I doubt anyone can make a useful contribution without having the physical board to test on. Sure you can translate documentation or fix grammar, but otherwise there isn't much you can or even should do without a board to test your changes on. "It compiles: ship it" level contributions are not helpful in general
- megous 6y ago
  That's not true at all. People can start reverse engineering the library right away. It should be possible to extract quite a bit of info from it, because it seems to be compiled with debug symbols. It should be possible to start documenting what it does, start investigating how it's structured, how it interacts with the HW, etc. This would help understanding the HW, and so on.

riffraff 6y ago

those may be low effort, but if are they useful I think it's still a net good, since they would also be easy to review.

oriesdan 6y ago

This is also very efficient guerrilla marketing. Instead of asking users to tell their friends about your brand, you can make a lottery making them win t-shirts with your logo on it. They will be so happy to have won something they will wear it. In this link's case, if pine64 want to get people excited about that EVB and start hacking with it, it sounds like an efficient strategy. Whatever the real value of the commits are, it's the users who are committed :) At least, in this case, they ask for contributions on a repos they own.

detaro 6y ago

That's always gonna happen with giveaways, and 1000 meaningful submissions would be expecting a bit much, so it's clearly planned in (it's also a fairly cheap board, so "wasting" a bunch isn't so bad). Still builds hype, and it's their own repo, so they can manage it how they see fit and don't annoy any third-party that isn't benefiting.

LeonM 6y ago

> Right now I see three pull requests: one that adds an echo statement to a build script, another that deletes a file they claim is not needed and one that renames a directory and changes some paths in the README. Sure, some people aim at low hanging fruit. But remember that this challenge was just announced. Actual quality contributions take time. It'll be interesting to check again in a month or so, and see what has been committed.

regularfry 6y ago

There are a few more PRs now. The bigger problem I can see is that in a month's time there are going to be 1000 PRs that haven't been able to build on each other, and 20,000 merge conflicts to resolve.

bluGill 6y ago

I doubt anyone can make a useful contribution without having the physical board to test on. Sure you can translate documentation or fix grammar, but otherwise there isn't much you can or even should do without a board to test your changes on. "It compiles: ship it" level contributions are not helpful in general

megous 6y ago
That's not true at all. People can start reverse engineering the library right away. It should be possible to extract quite a bit of info from it, because it seems to be compiled with debug symbols. It should be possible to start documenting what it does, start investigating how it's structured, how it interacts with the HW, etc. This would help understanding the HW, and so on.