This is to seed discussion on a proposal to add a function to the ILUGD society: That of a funding umbrella for community FOSS based development
Background: (Personal opinion) (1) The FOSS community is made up of a relatively large number of FOSS users and a smaller number of FOSS developers. Most are active users and evangelists in the late teens-early twenties, before largely moving into jobs where they are lost to the creative use of FOSS in building their careers. A lucky few join FOSS-supportive organisations (e.g Yahoo, Google) which encourage their use of FOSS and pay them sufficiently to build a career. The remaining enthusiasts work largely as hermits in self-run smaller organisations or as individuals. Their opportunities for creative use of their FOSS skills are limited due to lack of financial support in India. Many service the SME/NGO vertical, based on personal contacts. The services are largely system administration and content management. As individuals, they lack the organisational structure to bid for larger projects. Community based development projects lack the accountability required to deliver results. (2) The LUG as a space for a physical face-to-face meeting has long been redundant with increased use of collaboratories based on internet technologies. LUG meetings now have sparse attendance. The LUG needs to redefine its role. Post Freed.in/2009, we have discussed a few models in which an organisation could serve as an umbrella to funnel projects to community development. (1) Serve as a message board and match-making role The list presently allows commercial offerings to be made. (This could be more formal such as e.g. [1]) While the list works sufficiently well for outsourcing minor components of projects by organisations that control the project's funding, this does not work for government funded projects which do not permit solicitation. (2) A FOSS based organisation that has developed a corporate structure and business model to employ community participants in relevant projects would be ideal. I am not aware of any such organisation, and if these exist they are not relevant in govt. bids. Most organisations also work with a closed group of employees, and do not allow space for skill and project-based employment. I propose that ILUGD takes on this role. There have to be some changes in its structure for this to happen: A shift from a volunteer based management to a secretariat which would be required for responding to RFPs and project management, as well as some system of managing accountability. "Employees" are not permanent but work on a project based on skills, and we could tap skills through moonlighting as well. I would like to suggest an OSDD model for community participation: We have 4 roles - loosely based on the credit card systems. Everyone joins as a blue card. You can work on a project with a supervisor. Based on commit rights and contributions, you are promoted to a silver card, which allows you to supervise projects for which infrastructure is available. Further promotion - again merit based - moves you to a gold card, which allows you to bid for funding to execute projects. The platinum cards are responsible for getting in the major funding. Open for discussion. Andrew Lynn [1] See http://www.cofundos.org/ -- Freed.in : Freedom in technology and software _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
