🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998 10:43:53 GMT, PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de> wrote:
>cbbrowne@news.hex.net (Christopher Browne) writes:
>>The problem with public funding is that it separates out
>>"responsibility."
>
>>When things are administered by 'faceless bureaucrats,' responsibility
>>for outcomes gets quite distant from those that are paying the bills.
>
>This is a problem.  It applies to large corporations as well, of course.

- University bureaucracies can be remarkably difficult to deal with; I
had a rather bad horror story with an interaction between a university
and a professional society back in the '80s. 

- Swap "University" and "Professional Society" and get the same... 

- My own employer (AMR, owner of American Airlines is the *enormous*
parent company that owns Sabre, whom I work for...) is noted for having
fairly stiff bureaucracy. 

- There was, not long ago, a "flame war" where Linus Torvalds and
someone that might be mistaken for a spokescritter for The Open Group
were, um, somewhat critical of one another.  TOG appears to qualify as a
"scary bureaucracy."

>>It is facile (in both the French and English senses) for an individual
>>looking at what they spend money on to miss the difference between
>>public spending and an individual's private spending. 
>
>>When you directly spend $20 on something, you see the results, and
>>responsibility is quite directly assessed.  If you choose well, you are
>>immediately rewarded by having something nice; if you choose poorly, you
>>are immediately assessed the penalty of receiving something worthless.
>
>Unfortunately, even in schemes like the Software Bazaar, if you choose well
>you don't receive an immediate gratification of desires but only the
>satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed something to the public.
>The "tragedy of the commons" or "prisoner's dilemma" were discussed here.

I'll agree that "immediate gratification" is unlikely.  Until we see
"Just In Time software development," that won't happen. 

But I disagree with the three other assertions:
a) You don't *only* get the satisfaction of an altruistic result.
You get two other things:
  i) The utility of the software that has been written,
  ii) If you're the recipient of payment, you receive the utility of
      the payment for completion of the project.

b) "Tragedy of the Commons" does not directly apply to the development
of free software.

The main limited resource that could potentially get used up is the set
of willing developers. 

A *highly active* Software Bazaar of the style described by
<http://visar.csustan.edu> would be actively supplying *funding* to
encourage the continuing participation of those "willing developers" and
the entrance of new ones. 

This mitigates the "tragedy."  Perhaps not perfectly, but we don't need
perfection, just something "useful enough."

c) "Prisoner's Dilemna" also does not apply very well to free software,
unless I'm missing something. 

>>But as soon as it heads towards the public realm, life gets a little
>>more complicated.  It is necessary for someone else to administer the
>>spending.  If you know the administrator personally, you may have reason
>>to know to trust their choices.  (Or perhaps to be highly suspicious!)
>
>>As the separation increases, you start to need "administrative
>>policies," (hopefully) objective rules to indicate what can and cannot
>>be done with the public resources.
>
>If you have a certain competition of organisations who strive to establish a
>reputation as a trustable public agent, things can become a little better. A
>group in Munich is currently founding a public-interest "Assocation for a
>Free Informational Infrastructure".  The articles of association (in German)
>can be found in
>
>	http://www.lrz.de/~phm/mlugsatzde.html

I'll take a look at that; hopefully there's enough that I can make out
in my (exceedingly limited) German.  (Theoretically, I'm 25% German, by
blood.  But Grandpa Jersch died before I was old enough to speak, and
there weren't too many other Germans in either Alberta or Ottawa...)

>It was quite difficult to get recognition as a tax-deductible charity.

My local Linux Users Group has been working on this (at rather low
intensity) for quite a while now; this is indeed a problem.  That
"bureaucracy thing" rears its ugly head. 

I've not put a lot of thought into the way payouts from these systems
would be handled, but suspect that taxation issues would enter in
multiple ways. 

The primary benefit to treating this sort of thing as a "tax-exempt"
charity is in order that individual contributors may get better value
from their dollars.  If this mandated an amount of additional
administration that would cost enough to eat up that value, it may not
in fact be of value to be tax exempt.  

It might, in contrast, be preferable to have the amounts be treated as
"already-taxed gifts" so that the recipients don't have to pay taxes on
them.

I think that approach would work well under Canadian tax law (and should
verify it; I have some pretty good contacts in that regard), and suspect
that it would work under US tax law.  

It may not work in Germany; that's an argument for Germans to build up
some local equivalent suited to the German locale.  And for other
locales... 

>>I think that the Internet-based development of Linux allows us an
>>opportunity to elude this issue somewhat.
>
>and also to help build trust in mediating organisations.

Very true.

Trust is crucial here. 

>>Note that this does not indicate a way of directing
>>contributions to a *project* as such.  Directing contributions to a
>>*project* immediately introduces an indirection of responsibility, which
>>this whole approach is trying to avoid.
>
>Your Free Software Maintenance Bazaar is a good idea with merits, but it
>would not fit into the model of public-benefit associations under German tax
>law.  Interestingly, our Association is not allowed to donate to any private
>persons.  It may only help by commissioning new or buying out existing
>information works.

If the "FSMB" proved to be useful enough to implement, and helped
support the growth a community of developers in North America, that
could be quite useful enough. 

And as I mentioned earlier, being treated as "charitable" according to
local tax law is not forcibly necessary to make the exercise
worthwhile. 

Given the choice of:

a) A tax deductible contribution of $40, which allows $30 to go to
development, saves me $15 on my tax bill, and requires construction of a
sizable bureaucracy, or

b) A non-tax deductible contribution of $30, which can substantially
*all* go to development, with minimal bureaucracy,

I'd pick b) as preferable. 

-- 
When I shop for hardware I always look for the "Designed for Windows 95" logo.
I really thank Microsoft(TM) for encouraging manufacturers to label their
products this way, so I know what to AVOID.
cbbrowne@hex.net- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>