🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16 Nov 1998 05:01:28 +0100, Axel Boldt <axel@uni-paderborn.de> wrote:
>cbbrowne@news.hex.net (Christopher Browne) writes:
>> An orthogonal view could be to have a "Free Software Maintenance
>> Bazaar." (Just in case this idea is worth preserving, I've put most of
>> this discussion into my work copy of the web page
>> <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsffairshare.html>; it may take a few days
>> for the updates to hit the web...)
>> 
>> It would collect together a list of people that have been working on
>> systems that we know to be useful.  (Name whatever you like.)
>> 
>> People could contribute money to the FSMB, directing it to the
>> developers of their choice. 
>
>I think this is a very good idea. We definitely should get something
>going along these lines. 
>
>However, I would try to stay away from the mess of handling money. You
>get into all sorts of issues like bounced checks, international wires,
>money lost in the mail etc. etc.

Counterpoint: If part of the organization's task is to *handle* that
mess of handling money, that would be a legitimate value that it
provides to the process.

Valuable things about the middleman organization:

- It handles knowing something about tax policies,

- It handles dealing with bounced cheques,

- It collects together the 250 contributions so that Linus (or whomever
else) gets *one* cheque rather than having to fight with 250 envelopes,
15 deposit slips, and providing feedback on what was actually
contributed,

- If Linus decides that he's being paid adequately by Transmeta and
prefers to pass on the receipts with his name on them to (say) Linux
International, he doesn't have to fight with the administrative hassles
of signing cheques over...

There are costs and benefits both to decentralization as well as to
centralization.

I would think that such an organization would be quite worthwhile if it
provided a *convenient* way of flowing funds from the community to
developers.  It does not need to be 100% efficient to be viable; it can
be 95% efficient (e.g. - consuming 5% of the funds for administration)
and still be highly worthwhile to the community. 

>Then you whip out your favorite graphics-on-the-fly package and
>produce all sorts of fancy statistics and graphs. In the spirit of
>psychology hacking, you definitely want to have a listing of the
>biggest donors of course.

If they wish to be thus advertised. 

>The main difference to the Free Software Bazaar would be that no
>strings could be attached to the money.

I'm glad that you noticed that.  Yes, no strings would be attached. 

>I don't like the name very much though -- it's not really a bazaar
>since nothing is traded. How about "Free Software Pledge Drive" or
>"Free Software Donation Tally"?

Based on FSF standards, it would be highly appropriate for the name to
be just a little naughty... 

-- 
"Microsoft: The People who Brought the Y2K Bug into Software Titling"
-- cbbrowne@hex.net
cbbrowne@ntlug.org- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>