On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:48:07 +0100 Julien Cornuwel <batosai at freenetproject.org> wrote:
> Matthew Toseland a ?crit : > > I'm CCing this to devl, hope you don't mind. > > > > On Thursday 30 October 2008 05:13, you wrote: > >> Bank balance: $4,820.11 > >> > >> Paypal: $1,250.11 > > > > That's another 2.5 months at current exchange rates ... less if the UK > > economy > > rises / US economy falls. We should reinstate the paypal counter (including > > the bank balance) before begging for money. > >> We need to start thinking about raising more $$$. I can try Google > >> again, but who knows whether they'll be willing to contribute :-/ We > >> may need to rely on existing users, and the shitty economy won't help. > > What about setting up a bounty system ? For now, people donate to > support the project as a whole. Maybe they would be more inclined to > donate if they knew what they donate for. > > As an example, lets say that a fully-working, WoT-based, chat system > would take you 2 weeks at full time. We set a bounty on it at $1,500, > and when the amount is reached, you stop working on the node and do it. > > Of course, that would slow down the work on the node but that would > raise money and give people the features they want, bringing more users, > etc... > > What do you think ? > I think it's a terribly bad idea. You can't let users set priorities (by donating to one sub-project rather than another one). Developers set priorities. You can choose to donate or not, or to become a developer and set your own priorities (work on the project you're interested in). Also if you lack coding skills but you have money that you want to donate to one specific part of Freenet, you may hire a coder and have him working on the part of freenet that you want to contribute to. And if you don't have enough money to hire a coder but you have organizational skills, you might gather donations for that specific project and use the money to pay your geek. Or, you could have some teacher friend of yours have his students working on it as a school project. Think creatively. There are ways to contribute to one specific 'sub-project' within Freenet, but they all must end up with sending -code- to the developers and letting them make the final decisions. Alternatively, you may release your own software independently, or release modified versions of existing Freenet apps and plugins (it's OK as long as you stick with GPL). If we are too lazy to actually do some work on freenet, be it actual coding or organizational work, and we choose to contribute money or facilities or whatever we may have to contribute, then we should simply give to freenet as a whole and let the devlopers decide how to use it; donating to a specific sub-project within freenet isn't acceptable because that would limit the developers' ability to plan work, resulting in a loss of effectivity. NOTE: Releasing unofficial builds of the node software is definitely a bad idea. If you want to work on the node you should send your code to toad or nextgens, and discuss the details with them. Those ideas about unofficial releases refer to freenet applications and plugins, not to the node itself. -- FAFS - The Freenet Applications FreeSite USK at ugb~uuscsidMI-Ze8laZe~o3BUIb3S50i25RIwDH99M,9T20t3xoG-dQfMO94LGOl9AxRTkaz~TykFY-voqaTQI,AQACAAE/FAFS/41/ freemail: luke771 at MJWEES3VJBMS2ZKMIJUECT3SJB3UK5SBKBAVQYJQO5FXGWSROE2USNDKNMZU2SK2ORXUKLDZJYWXQUSNMRYUCWD6IF3HAULWKRKWW2SJJVEGQQTDNNKGYMRWKFZW6V3ONNIDKQ3DKR3SYQKRIFBUCQKF.freemail
