On the bias issue: I haven't operated a worker proposal on BitShares for a number of years now, nor did we ever spend much from the ones we ran. The majority of the funds from the primary worker proposal we ran mostly sit idle to this day, because we haven't seen a strong need to do anything to justify spending them.
As far as your "in practice" argument, we apparently have a completely different view of the situation. I see lots of positive work done by the current contractors being paid by worker proposals. I think the worker proposal system has done a lot to sustain BitShares when it's core team left the coin. Without it, I don't think BitShares would have its current marketcap ranking. Along these lines, it's useful to note that BitShares was actually higher ranked than Steem until the recent and mostly unexplained pump in the price of Steem.
I really disagree with your argument on centralization of the development process. Taking a look at the results from Steemit and from BitShares workers over the past few years and looking at how much money was spent by both groups, I think it's obvious that BitShares funds have been spent much more efficiently.
@blocktrades, by the way, the real "bias" I was talking about is the fact that you already do some work by requesting funds and this system will make it easier for you to do so.
Sure, but the same could be said of anyone who makes a similar proposal to do the work. Should the proposal be ignored because anyone who could propose to do it is potentially biased?
Why not just say that this proposal is biased to all programmers? 😆
Is the work being done not more important than who is doing it?
@blocktrades I agree that the worker proposal system is an effective plan B.
However, It is not something we need at the moment since the steem core team is not leaving.
Effectively, they left around the end of 2016, which was the last time that anything was being accomplished at a meaningful rate.
Since then we have had a change to the reward curve (mostly a coding tweak), some other minor blockchain coding tweaks, a few UI tweaks in steemit.com, a few security patches, and the RC system. As well as total non-performance on the 2017 roadmap, and non-completion and non-delivery of SMTs which was essentially the 2018 roadmap. And finally obstructionism mixed with outright hostility on outside involvement with the development process. The security patches are important and the RC system was significant development but none of this is remotely close to two years of work for a team (and also rolled out poorly).
I do not even remotely share your confidence in the "core team" whether they have explicitly announced their departure or not.
Agree, we are "stuck in a rut" ...
I share your non-confidence that anything will be accomplished at a meaningful rate in the future ...
I wished there was someone that could convince me otherwise.
I would say it's rather late to think about such things at the point when a core team exits as a substantial drop in price could result before things stabilize. Also, lately there's been a pretty overwhelming desire by the community to bring in more outside developers. This proposal is really about trying to decentralize that.