Launching the Quality Contribution Program
I’m happy to now announce the full Quality Contribution program tentatively described in December.
Some basics: We understand that the main reason users report bugs is to get them fixed. That said, we still think we have plenty of opportunities of improving our ways when it comes to making it easier for you to help us.
The Quality Contribution Program goal is to improve the quality of MySQL products, with the active co-operation of the MySQL user community. The program facilitates this by
- visibly acknowledging the participants by attributing individual quality enhancements to them;
- rewarding the participants with benefits in proportion to their contribution (Awards are subscriptions to MySQL Enterprise);
- streamlining the process of contributing to MySQL Quality for the benefit of both current and future contributors
Quality Contributions fall into three categories: (i) bug reports, (ii) test cases, and (iii) code patches. We evaluate each contribution with a publicly verifiable set of rules, and the contributor accumulates the QA points for all contributions submitted during the last 12 months.
The award is MySQL Enterprise subscriptions:
| Candidate: | someone who has started doing contributions |
| Basic: | a proven contributor, who has submitted material, earning at least 50 QA points and a MySQL Enterprise Basic subscription; |
| Silver: | a very productive contributor, earning at least 200 QA points and a MySQL Enterprise Silver subscription; |
| Gold: | a phenomenal contributor, who has earned at least 500 QA points and a MySQL Enterprise Gold subscription; |
| Platinum: | The contributor that makes the headlines, having delivered contributions up to 1000 QA points and thus getting a MySQL Enterprise Platinum subscription; |
And let me thank the 60 Quality Contributors that have already enrolled! Specifically, I want to list by name the topmost 20 contributors, to which MySQL and its user community is greatly indebted:
Top contributors
| No | name | QA points | level |
| 1 | Martin Friebe | 306 | Silver |
| 2 | Beat Vontobel, MeteoNews AG | 285 | Silver |
| 3 | Debian user community | 264 | Silver |
| 4 | Heinz Schweitzer | 243 | Silver |
| 5 | Carl F. Karsten, dabodev.com | 207 | Silver |
| 6 | Jared Sullivan, Paradigm IT Solutions | 153 | Basic |
| 7 | Olaf van der Spek | 150 | Basic |
| 8 | Peter Laursen, Webyog Softworks Private Limited (”Webyog”) | 135 | Basic |
| 9 | Jocelyn Fournier, www.mesdiscussions.net | 132 | Basic |
| 10 | Peter Zaitsev, MySQLPerformanceBlog.COM | 130 | Basic |
| 11 | Gisbert W. Selke, TapirSoft | 126 | Basic |
| 12 | John Yodsnukis, dbbd.net | 100 | Basic |
| 13 | Paolo “pabloj” Magnoli, pabloj.blogspot.com | 99 | Basic |
| 14 | Dave Pullin, ColdLogic LLC | 96 | Basic |
| 15 | Andreas Påhlsson | 90 | Basic |
| 16 | Jeremy Cole, Proven Scaling LLC | 90 | Basic |
| 17 | Marc Castrovinci, Smartonline.com | 90 | Basic |
| 18 | Yoshiaki Tajika, NEC System Technologies | 80 | Basic |
| 19 | Roberto Spadim, Spadim Technology / Brazil | 75 | Basic |
| 20 | Stefaan “Annunaki” Lesage, PeopleWare N.V. | 72 | Basic |
For us to be able to accept test cases and bug patches from a legal perspective, we have to ask our contributors to agree to our Contributor License Agreement, which exists in a click-through form. Should you have any questions on this or other matters, please contact Giuseppe Maxia and/or myself at firstname@mysql.com.
So please enroll in the program and help us identify, test and fix our bugs!
March 1st, 2007 at 16:40
[...] 1 Mar 2007 MySQL Rewards Top Contributors Posted by Savio Rodrigues under JBoss , MySQL , Open Source I just read about MySQL’sQuality Contribution Program (QCP) and I have to say it rocks! It’s a great way to build and maintain community. [...]
March 10th, 2007 at 6:20
[...] Another announcment: Kaj Arnö launches MySQL AB’s Quality Contribution Program, their new approach to recognizing, crediting, and rewarding volunteer contributors of bug reports, test cases, and code patches. It also aims to make easier the process of submitting those things. [...]