🚀 go-pugleaf

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. 
> 
> Seeing as how there are commonly CVS archives that can be searched, the
> contributors can themselves take whatever pains they like to determine
> which developers they consider most "deserving."
> 
> If the FSMB web site were to publish how much (in aggregate) was
> contributed to each developer, this allows people to, to some extent,
> self-optimize their contributions.  Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, RMS, and
> Donald Becker quickly come to mind as "celebrities" that would likely
> have somewhat elevated amounts contributed to them.  If Linus gets $1M,
> and nobody else gets *anything,* this obviously doesn't encourage other
> developers to participate.  I am sure that people would quickly come to
> see it as more valuable to spread their contributions to a variety of
> individuals working on various projects. 

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.

A central point of failure is always bad; the thing should be
selforganizing somehow, and minimum-maintenance. Maybe something like
this could work:

People send money to a developer of their choice and at the same time
announce this to the FSMB. The FSMB site sends an automatic email to
the developer asking them to confirm receipt of the money with a
return email. The FSMB web site then keeps two totals per developer:
"pledged donations" and "confirmed donations". In addition, it makes
available a detailed list of all the pledged and confirmed donations,
together with pledgee's name and email (in order to produce some peer
pressure).

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.

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

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"?


P.S. I checked out your web page
http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsffairshare.html and I like this list of
worthwhile causes a lot. One little thing though: you tell people that
the most important contribution they can make is monetary. I disagree.
By far the most important contribution to the Free Software movement
is code. If they can't program, they should start with Python and they
will turn into hackers in no time. Bad code is better than no code,
because in a bazaar it will miraculously turn into good code sooner or
later. Every new hacker is a tremendous resource for the community,
while money is still somewhat besides the point. Personally, I like it
that way.


-- 
 Axel Boldt  **  axel@uni-paderborn.de  **  math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/
 Sponsor free software at the Free Software Bazaar visar.csustan.edu/bazaar/