Dries Buytaert wrote:
Only for the winner, that is. If they hadn't won, then they wouldn't be able to eat? :) Deliberate misinterpretation :P They can justify spending the time on the basis that they *might* win an expensive piece of hardware, something that would otherwise be a major expense to their business.
Clearly, some people are willing to take the risk, or actually enjoy a challenge. More importantly there is a big incentive to succeed. And doing it half-heartedly would clearly be pointless, since you'd be unlikely to win.
That said, Robert Douglas, at one point, toyed with the idea to organize a theme contest. I can only relate an anecdote and an experience. Earlier this year one of the web design lists I subscribe to had an interesting thread about an organization offering $100 dollar prize in a design competition and only receiving one entry - which they didn't like. Secondly there was the recent design competition for evolt.org (evolt,org is of course now running on Drupal). No prizes offered. Two entries were received, both from the core of people already involved with evolt.org, none from the wider community. Both designs are competent and visually improve on the current site, but neither have yet been implemented, I suspect because they're evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Nobody really has the incentive or time to polish the designs and push them out.
My point is: you need to offer a real incentive if you want a design shop to come up with a better admin interface and/or a new core theme. Kudos doesn't really cut it. -- Adrian Simmons (aka adrinux) <http://adrinux.perlucida.com> e-mail <mailto:adrinux@perlucida.com>