[schooltool-dev] Merging of srichter's hierarchical term branch into trunk

[Tom Hoffman]

Since we've argued this out on the development list, I should probably
provide a little more historical context.

In the fall of 2005 and spring of 2006 Stephan did a lot of work for
SchoolTool, and we had verbal plans for that work to continue
throughout the summer, covering some key components of SchoolTool that
would be necessary to have a testable product ready for the fall.

Stephan got a much more lucrative job offer in the spring, and drifted
away from SchoolTool in the middle of a contract to come up with a new
term implementation.  This was not a clean break, his work slowed down
with no clear explanation, promises were made but not kept.  I was
probably too tolerant of interruptions for sudden trips to Europe and
the like.

If I recall correctly, Stephan also was unhappy because the work was
taking more time than anticipated, and the payment was based on the
time estimates we agreed to in the proposal, rather than the actual
time spent.  Those estimates were primarily his, though, and he agreed
to them.

Regardless, the term contract was never finished.  Mark was FURIOUS.
I had stuck my neck out and vouched for Stephan in the first place.  I
was depressed for months.  The development schedule for the year was
wrecked, because I'd let the endgame for Stephan's leaving drag on for
months, and finding an equivalent Zope 3 hacker is impossible.  I was
pretty much ready to get a new job.

As the term work was not completed, Stephan never received final
payment for that proposal.  I hadn't given much thought to the
provenance of that code, but he is (probably) right that it is his
copyright (or at least ambiguous) if he has not been paid for it.  It
only has had the wrong copyright headers insofar as it has had the
ones he applied.

In the long twilight of Stephan's work for SchoolTool, he also worked
for us as a mentor and sprint leader at the NELS sprint in New
Hampshire.  If I recall the sequence of events correctly, he invoiced
us for this after I had explained to Mark that Stephan had left us
mid-proposal.  I responded to Stephan by advising him that I thought
it best to "let sleeping dogs lie."  I didn't hear back from Stephan
on the matter, so I left it at that, but now I'll submit the NELS
invoice to Mark and see what happens.

--Tom

On 9/19/07, Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/19/07, Stephan Richter <srichter at cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:53, Tom Hoffman wrote:
> > > On 9/19/07, Stephan Richter <srichter at cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:32, Tom Hoffman wrote:
> > > > > I think it is necessary, and now is better than later.
> > > >
> > > > In that case, I would like to be paid for this work!
> > >
> > > Stephan
> > >
> > > If you complete the work in the attached proposal, I'll pay you for
> > > it, but it is a little late now.
> >
> > If this is the case, then the license header in the affected files is
> > incorrect. The Shuttlesworth Foundation is not the sole copyright holder of
> > the source code, documentation and tests. All code written within
> > the "srichter-term-gradebook-work2" branch by me carry my copyright and thus
> > contain incorrect headers. Please remove that branch from the repository
> > completely or change the copyright notice to include my name explicitly.
>
> We'll remove the branch.
>
> > There is also another outstanding invoice that you refused to pay. I have not
> > yet received the payment for the "SchoolTool Sprint at NELS (UNH)" for the
> > amount of $1,360.
>
> I'll submit this today.
>
> --Tom
>