On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:54:33 -0400, Joseph Rushton Wakeling
<joseph.wakel...@webdrake.net> wrote:
On 28/08/12 00:28, SomeDude wrote:
I wish Walter went on kickstarter to get public funds allowing him to
hire a
couple of full time developers.
Yes, but you have to be cautious about things like that. Having people
paid by the project to work on things can demotivate the efforts of
other contributors.
There is another project I have some connection to where one of the
major contributors, a freelance developer, started soliciting donations
to enable him to dedicate work time to the project, with in particular a
promise that if more than a certain threshold could be raised, he'd be
full-time on it.
The effect of this was decidedly ambivalent, with several project
members feeling they didn't contribute to the project so that other
people could make money off it. It's not clear that the extra time he
dedicated was worth the loss of those other contributions.
It's a different thing if some 3rd party comes in and says, "OK, we're
going to pay some of our staff to work on this project." But having the
project itself select certain people to be paid, or having project
members solicit donations in this way, can be problematic.
At the very least you'd need to define the parameters and expectations
quite precisely, so that people can see where it does or doesn't overlap
with work they might have contributed as volunteers.
Um what? If someone wants to solicit donations in order to work on D,
there is *nothing* that we can do to stop that.
What do we do, reject that contributor? I think that's a much worse plan
of action. D needs all the help it can get, and if someone can only
contribute full time if he gets paid, and people are willing to pay him,
GREAT!
I fail to see how this story has any moral except, "some people hate
money". Which really isn't most of us here. Myself in particular, I have
very little time to work on D because I have a full time job so I can
support my family, and a paying side gig.
-Steve
