Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 01:12, Wouter Verhelst wrote: >> Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working? > > I know that the FreeBSD community has experimented with paid development > for FreeBSD in the past; the first such attempt was done by Poul-Henning > Kamp[1]. AIUI, the model they have used goes something like this: > > - Some FreeBSD developer decides to do sponsored development. This > developer announces that fact, states the areas that the sponsored > development will be about, an amount of money that would be required > for the plan to go through, and asks for sponsorship pledges. > - People with an interest in the things this developer intends work on > pledge monies. There have been people who pledged as little as one > euro, and companies who pledged several tens of thousands. > - If the amount of community pledges seem reasonable enough and, in the > judgement of the people in charge of the FreeBSD foundation (which > holds monies in trust for FreeBSD), the cause is worth it, then monies > may be pledged to the cause by the foundation as well. This is so damn good an idea! Debian would do well by being flexible enough to explore this sort of thing. -- blog: http://tshepang.tumblr.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/aanlktiken15rfodlfgrfb=tiv_yemebobjuwf9d=2...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 04:53:20PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:12:02AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > I also don't think it is a bad thing, in principle, if Debian were to > > pay people to work on Debian. However, it is generally a bad idea if > > some cabal were to select who could get Debian monies and who couldn't; > > I believe that is the main problem that existed with the Dunk-Tank > > story. > > The use of Debian money for Dunc Tank was only present in a first draft that > was discarded in the face of opposition within the project. Does the final > funding solution that was implemented also fall under this "cabal" > description, in your opinion? It was a bit of a gray area. On the one hand, the final funding solution was open, did not in theory limit who could benefit from the set-up, and was not strictly related to Debian. On the other hand, it was a fairly logical continuation of what could be considered as such, and I feel more effort could have been put into engaging with the community to work out bad feelings than has been done. For the record, I did second the original unamended text for 2006_006, the 'Re-affirm support to the Debian Project Leader' vote, which had the phrase 'The Debian Project does not object to the experiment named "Dunc-Tank", lead by Anthony Towns, the current DPL, and Steve McIntyre, the Second in Charge' in it, and I would do so again if the situation were to repeat itself. [...] > If not, how do you reconcile this with the ongoing community > resistance to Dunc Tank even after it was decoupled from Debian money? I believe that many (though certainly not all) people who were still resistant against Dunc Tank after its decoupling from Debian money, would not have rejected the idea had it been proposed the way it was eventually implemented from the start. However, by the time the decoupling had happened, a rather large flamewar was already going on, and many people failed to rationalize by that time what was happening, instead reacting more emotionally. I can of course not speak for the whole community, however; this is just how I perceive that things happened. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:12:02AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > I also don't think it is a bad thing, in principle, if Debian were to > pay people to work on Debian. However, it is generally a bad idea if > some cabal were to select who could get Debian monies and who couldn't; > I believe that is the main problem that existed with the Dunk-Tank > story. The use of Debian money for Dunc Tank was only present in a first draft that was discarded in the face of opposition within the project. Does the final funding solution that was implemented also fall under this "cabal" description, in your opinion? If so, how do you distinguish this from other DDs who are privately funded to work on Debian? If not, how do you reconcile this with the ongoing community resistance to Dunc Tank even after it was decoupled from Debian money? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100315235320.gb21...@dario.dodds.net
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Hi Raphael, On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > Hello, > > this is a question to all DPL candidates. > > Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance > Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the > projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the > main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: > - everybody can propose projects to be financed > - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and > by the donors > - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring > tasks > > What advice would you give her? A very good question; thank you for giving me the chance to reply to it. Let me first say that I do not think it is a bad thing that some people get paid to work on Debian while some others don't. That's a perfectly normal thing; some people like Debian so much that they don't want to do anything else, others see Debian just as a hobby, which they'd lose if they'd get a job that involves Debian. I also don't think it is a bad thing, in principle, if Debian were to pay people to work on Debian. However, it is generally a bad idea if some cabal were to select who could get Debian monies and who couldn't; I believe that is the main problem that existed with the Dunk-Tank story. > What other pitfalls from Dunc-Tank must she pay attention to? Not sure. > Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working? I know that the FreeBSD community has experimented with paid development for FreeBSD in the past; the first such attempt was done by Poul-Henning Kamp[1]. AIUI, the model they have used goes something like this: - Some FreeBSD developer decides to do sponsored development. This developer announces that fact, states the areas that the sponsored development will be about, an amount of money that would be required for the plan to go through, and asks for sponsorship pledges. - People with an interest in the things this developer intends work on pledge monies. There have been people who pledged as little as one euro, and companies who pledged several tens of thousands. - If the amount of community pledges seem reasonable enough and, in the judgement of the people in charge of the FreeBSD foundation (which holds monies in trust for FreeBSD), the cause is worth it, then monies may be pledged to the cause by the foundation as well. > Would you encourage her to go forward or would you try to convince her to > forget this idea? I believe the FreeBSD model keeps a good balance between spending money on causes that benefit the project on the one hand, and not being too cabalistic on the other, and would encourage anyone who wants to attempt something similar in Debian. I do not plan to actively pursue this myself, however. I don't think having some "infrastructure" for sponsored development within Debian is a good idea. [1] http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/funding.html -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 09:39:27AM +1100, Anthony Towns wrote:
> But all that aside, GSoC still gets some "flames" on Debian lists; see
> the thread on -devel from about this time last year, eg:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00424.html
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00431.html
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00441.html
FWIW, I believe the above flames (which match those I remember having
ever had about GSoC) are in a quite different field than those we had
about Dunc-Tank.
The main criticism to GSoC we had within the project is that it should
not be used to support student which are already involved in Debian as
DDs and/or DMs. That is a criticism I personally share. GSoC is about
getting new blood in the project; hiring students which are already
involved in the project pretty much defeats that purpose.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 02:04:37PM +1100, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 05:01, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > Some DDs are able to pursue specific Debian projects due to bounties
> > they put on the projects (both AJ and Raphael have similar initiatives
> > on their homepages, even though I don't know how much they are
> > successful in terms of "customers").
>
> Unless you mean some other AJ, that's not right. I mean, technically I
> guess I haven't removed the page for that I had back in 2005, but I
So, the AJ I had in mind was indeed you and the initiative I had in mind
was the "AJ market" you referenced. In what I wrote there seems to be
just an imprecision of out-of-date-ness: the initiative is not running
anymore. I did remember "the-aj-market" post, but I had no idea how much
successful it had been (as I noted in the post).
Anyhow, as I believe it was clear from the context, it was not meant to
be a criticism: such initiative are parts of the initiative I believe
are acceptable (a DD which campaigns for supporting his own work).
> One of the challenges of being DPL is working out when to let a few
> violently opposed people block projects and ideas being worked on, and
> when (and how) to put up with the flack, deal with their concerns and
> objections and continue anyway. Anything the leader tries to do will
> fall into one of two camps: no one will care, or someone will be
> opposed and try to make life painful for the people trying to make it
> happen.
I guess so. My point here is that, in every non-consensual decision
(which in Debian I believe approaches the totality of the decision taken
by the DPL and/or "core teams") one should balance the benefits of the
decision, with its consequences on those who disagree with it. My
personal position on this _specific_ issue is that the balance of
benefits and potential disruptures is not worth to try something like
Dunc-Tank again in the near future. At least not within Debian, that is.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Hi Julien, On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Julien Cristau wrote: > Compare "Random Joe Developer is soliciting funding for his debian work" > vs "Debian is soliciting funding for Random Joe Developer's debian > work". The former is fine IMO, has no risk of being seen as a "Debian" > thing, and can be done without involving the DPL or anyone besides > Random Joe. In the former case there's no infrastructure if every "Random Joe" has to solicit funding individually. It will only work with big donors/sponsors that can pay a full project alone (because they have a genuine interest in seeing that project completed). With an infrastructure, smaller donations can be combined, it will have more visibility (since all developers promote the same thing, and since all completed projects are showing that the infrastructure is useful and working). > Why do you think Debian as a project, or the DPL, should be involved in > this? I do no think they have to be involved. But if you have an external project where multiple DD propose projects and promote it (since they want it to be successful so that their projects are financed), do you really believe that it would not be seen as a Debian thing? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100314080102.gb14...@rivendell
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 05:01, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > Some DDs are able to pursue specific Debian projects due to bounties > they put on the projects (both AJ and Raphael have similar initiatives > on their homepages, even though I don't know how much they are > successful in terms of "customers"). Unless you mean some other AJ, that's not right. I mean, technically I guess I haven't removed the page for that I had back in 2005, but I don't think it's linked from anywhere anymore except maybe old blog posts; Google doesn't see any links anyway. I think I got about $100 out of bounties all up. For anyone who cares, I blogged about the concept at: http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/04/the-aj-market http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/18/aj-market-update And the stuff that got done with that was: http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/10/usercategories-and-other-miscellania (BTS usertags, usercategories) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/16/tiffani (apt pdiffs) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/10/26/debugging-debootstrap (debootstrap miscellania) http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/06/britneys-memory-management (testing scripts memory management) It was fun and educational, but covered about a month's worth of broadband. OTOH, I was lucky enough to be able to get a couple of ideas directly funded at a more useful level (about $2000 AUD from Andrew Pollock and about $3000 USD from HP iirc). http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/17/afraid-of-your-neighbours-disapproval http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/26/the-niv2-plot http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/26/queue-building http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/06/security-infrastructure-changes http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/12/changing-the-security-infrastructure http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/12/21/dak-dsa -- support for "unembargoed" uploads http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2005/11/16/hacking-dak http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/12/msg00014.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg7.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors-announce/2006/02/msg0.html http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/apt/apt_0.7.25.3/changelog#versionversion0.6.44 http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00014.html -- support for the mirror split and inclusion of amd64 I did get flamed for accepting money to work on the latter project while at the same time being an ftpmaster. But then I also got flamed for the AJ market thing. > A bit of history. IIRC, the Dunc-Tank affair has gone through two > consequent problems. The first one was the proposal to use Debian money > to pay DDs. That proposal was taken back, since it was obvious that most > DDs were against. For the record, it was taken back because /some/ DDs were /strongly/ against it. At that point there hadn't been a formal poll, and far more people had posted in support than against. It's been the appropriate number of years, so the thread could even be declassified now if someone wanted to go to the effort... The eventual dunc-tank implementation had a few ballots on it; there was the "we recall the DPL (in order to disassociate ourselves with it)" one [0], which failed by 277 votes to 48; there was the "reaffirms support for the DPL; dunc-tank isn't a Debian project; wish success to projects funding Debian or helping the release of etch" one [1] which succeeded by 227 votes to 93 (and was preferred to the proposed amendment "reaffirm support for the DPL; but not endorse or support his other projects" by 177 to 128 voters). Another set of resolutions were proposed to explicitly endorse dunc-tank or to tell the RMs to decline payment and donors not to donate [2] didn't receive sufficient seconds to be voted on. Personally, I guess I'm more surprised people are still inclined to raise the issue -- there never used to be that many people looking into funding DDs, and unlike back then, it's now obvious that there's not an insignificant amount of opposition to deal with if you are interested in trying something out. > (For full disclosure and as an additional note: back then in Dunc-Tank I > was not against external founding. However, the fact that it was > _still_ that much controversial and flame-prone is enough of a reason, > for me as potential DPL, to discourage any DDs/DMs for attempting it > again. The benefits of the founding can be totally overtaken by the > disadvantages of troubles created in the community.) One of the challenges of being DPL is working out when to let a few violently opposed people block projects and ideas being worked on, and when (and how) to put up with the flack, deal with their concerns and objections and continue anyway. Anything the leader tries to do will fall into one of two camps: no one
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 05:11, Mike Hommey wrote: > > Note that GSoc is supposed to sponsor students to do some development > work, preferably with the purpose of getting these people involved in a > project they weren't involved in to begin with. That's not, per se, accurate. From the GSoC FAQ: Many of our past participants had never participated in an open-source project before GSoC; others used the GSoC stipend as an opportunity to concentrate fully on their existing open source coding activities over the summer. Many of our 'graduates' have later become program mentors. -- http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs#what_is Google only funds students, and only funds development work, but apart from that, exactly what's worked on and what the aim is is left up to the project. > Considering this, I think there are good reasons GSoC didn't get the > flames that DuncTank had. Probably the major reason is just that Google remain much more interested in avoiding flame wars than I was with dunc-tank. For instance when someone criticises Google for GSoC, people will come to its defence, even when the criticism's legitimate; nobody's made much effort to do that for dunc-tank, including me, including when it was running. There's a number of features in that vein in general: the money is fixed as are the overall terms so there's simply no room for debate, a lot of it's done in forum that are only open to people who are already participating, people who do generate controversy and arguments about it tend to not be invited to participate again next year, and there are plenty of free and open source projects involved so there's a fair bit of social proof that it doesn't screw up projects. Similar things apply in Debian -- the people who get to judge the applications are the ones who've signed up to be potential mentors, and hence have already indicated they approve of the overall idea at least in principle. A major factor in avoiding the arguments, in my opinion, is also that GSoC is restricted to students. That means a bunch of Debian contributors naturally can't apply, which in some sense avoids the sense of unfairness that many people who are doing good work aren't getting funded equivalently -- "of course they aren't, they're not students". It also avoids the concern that some people will end up getting "jobs" via GSoC -- people generally only get to be students for a few years, after which they can't keep being part of GSoC. To some extent it also avoids the problem of differentiating the people who decide who should get paid and who gets paid (you don't want people deciding to pay themselves, generally) -- if you're a student you apply for funding, if you're not, you're a mentor; and Google adds a specific rule that you can't be a mentor and apply for funding to do away with the occassional edge case. But all that aside, GSoC still gets some "flames" on Debian lists; see the thread on -devel from about this time last year, eg: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00424.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00431.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/04/msg00441.html Out of free and open source projects, Debian isn't the most amenable to funding and corporate sponsorship. There are (demonstrably) ways to manage that though, and if you're interested in stress-testing funding ideas, well, it's a particularly good supplier of stress in this area. ;) As far as DPLness is concerned, I (as DPL) was an GSoC admin in the first year Debian participated in GSoC, and I think it would've been difficult for Debian to join without at least the DPL's support via a prompt delegation so that someone was authorised to register the project with Google and setup mentors and so forth. (I'm pretty sure the lack of a quick response was what meant we missed out in participating in the first year Google ran GSoC; that both would've required a very quick response though, and it's possible letting other projects try these things first and only adopting things proven to work is a good idea anyway) Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87b3a4191003131439j3ec57c0cqe3ca706547678...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Raphael, On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 17:52:33 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Margarita Manterola wrote: > > However, if it's seen as a "Debian" thing, instead of an external > > thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the > > side of the people that don't get any money for their work. > > How can you avoid this? If you request donations for a specific purpose > (projects improving Debian), how can you avoid being seen as a Debian > thing? > Compare "Random Joe Developer is soliciting funding for his debian work" vs "Debian is soliciting funding for Random Joe Developer's debian work". The former is fine IMO, has no risk of being seen as a "Debian" thing, and can be done without involving the DPL or anyone besides Random Joe. Why do you think Debian as a project, or the DPL, should be involved in this? Cheers, Julien signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 07:01:21PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > So, given that my main perplexities come from the fact that a DD is > involved in organizing all this, you can imagine I wouldn't mind: a > company doing that (which is already the case for Google with GSoC), a > non-DD/DM doing that, or even a DD/DM retiring from the project *to* do > that. Replying here, but that could well have gone in another sub-thread: Note that GSoc is supposed to sponsor students to do some development work, preferably with the purpose of getting these people involved in a project they weren't involved in to begin with. Considering this, I think there are good reasons GSoC didn't get the flames that DuncTank had. Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313181141.ga12...@glandium.org
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance
> Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the
> projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the
> main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project:
First a few general thoughts of mine on the topic "DDs/DMs getting paid
to do Debian work", then some answers to your more specific questions.
The fact that not all DDs are equal in terms of how/if they get paid for
their Debian work is, well, a fact. Personally, my work contract does
not mention Debian at all, but I'm nevertheless doing some Debian
activities during my work time and that is accepted, if not encouraged.
Some DDs are able to pursue specific Debian projects due to bounties
they put on the projects (both AJ and Raphael have similar initiatives
on their homepages, even though I don't know how much they are
successful in terms of "customers"). Some others work for companies
which heavily use specific packages and they are therefore paid to
maintain such packages in Debian.
There is nothing wrong with that. While all the above scenarios create
disparities, that's just life: as more and more the IT market gets
interested in FOSS, the more and more we will have people paid to work
on FOSS, and Debian is part of that. We cannot stop that.
Still, Debian is a peculiar distribution also because it is a volunteer
project, not explicitly run or supported (e.g. in its infrastructure) by
any single/specific company. That is a value: we should protect it, we
should *advertise* it (i.e. state clearly that in Debian money do not
drive decisions!), and we should never become *dependent* on specific
founding schemes.
According to this view of mine, the scenario created by the DD
contacting the DPL about such a proposition is dangerous, mainly because
it is a DD which is proposing it, leading to a potential conflict of
interest.
> What advice would you give her?
I would advice her, as a DD, to refrain from organizing that.
A bit of history. IIRC, the Dunc-Tank affair has gone through two
consequent problems. The first one was the proposal to use Debian money
to pay DDs. That proposal was taken back, since it was obvious that most
DDs were against. Then, the proposal was still pursued, now by
externalizing fund raising. Still, on the board of the organizers of the
(now) external activity, there were several DDs, including the DPL
himself. That was enough of a reason for unhappiness shared by a lot of
project members.
I've personally learned a lesson from the experience: explicit founding
of Debian activity should be *disjoint* from the project, both in terms
of where the money come from, and in terms of who are the people
organizing the machinery.
(For full disclosure and as an additional note: back then in Dunc-Tank I
was not against external founding. However, the fact that it was
_still_ that much controversial and flame-prone is enough of a reason,
for me as potential DPL, to discourage any DDs/DMs for attempting it
again. The benefits of the founding can be totally overtaken by the
disadvantages of troubles created in the community.)
So, given that my main perplexities come from the fact that a DD is
involved in organizing all this, you can imagine I wouldn't mind: a
company doing that (which is already the case for Google with GSoC), a
non-DD/DM doing that, or even a DD/DM retiring from the project *to* do
that.
> What other pitfalls from Dunc-Tank must she pay attention to?
She should pay attention to the fact that she is a DD. According to my
vision, that would then become a blocker to go forward.
> Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working?
>
> Would you encourage her to go forward or would you try to convince her to
> forget this idea?
In the end, it turns out I've already answered to these above :-)
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
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Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Hi, thanks for your answers! On Sat, 13 Mar 2010, Margarita Manterola wrote: > On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance > > Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the > > projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the > > main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: > > - everybody can propose projects to be financed > > - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and > > by the donors > > - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring > > tasks > > This sounds quite similar to how the GSoC is done. The main problem > in this scenario is actually finding the sponsors to pay for the > developers, and then control that the projects get done as expected. Indeed, in GSoC, there's a mentor that takes a preliminary decision about the outcome (successful or not) of the project and reports are produced. Google then decides alone if he follows or not the decision of the mentor. How could that be transposed in the Debian case? Would a DD acting as external supervisor be enough? Or de we need a second layer review like Google does in the GSoC? > However, if it's seen as a "Debian" thing, instead of an external > thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the > side of the people that don't get any money for their work. How can you avoid this? If you request donations for a specific purpose (projects improving Debian), how can you avoid being seen as a Debian thing? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Like what I do? Sponsor me: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/05/5-years-of-freexian/ My Debian goals: http://ouaza.com/wp/2010/01/09/debian-related-goals-for-2010/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313165233.gb10...@rivendell
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 4:18 AM, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance > Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the > projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the > main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: > - everybody can propose projects to be financed > - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and > by the donors > - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring > tasks This sounds quite similar to how the GSoC is done. The main problem in this scenario is actually finding the sponsors to pay for the developers, and then control that the projects get done as expected. > What advice would you give her? > What other pitfalls from Dunc-Tank must she pay attention to? We have already participated in a number of GSoCs (four, if I'm not mistaken), and it hasn't issued any social problems like Dunc Tank did. So, if there were to be other sponsors willing to pay for a similar thing, it's not likely that there would be a bad reaction towards it. However, if it's seen as a "Debian" thing, instead of an external thing like GSoC is, then it might lead to some resentment from the side of the people that don't get any money for their work. > Do you have concrete suggestions for her on how it should be working? The main issue would be that the whole process should be very transparent. When money plays a role, it's very important that everybody knows what kind of money we are talking about, what the responsibilities of the people receiving the money are, and how the whole thing actually benefits Debian. > Would you encourage her to go forward or would you try to convince her to > forget this idea? I don't like it too much, so I would definitely not encourage it. I'd tell them to discuss this idea (with more details) on debian-project and see what the general opinion of the project is, and only decide to go forward with it or not after that. -- Besos, Marga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e8bbf0361003130735y1a002efav2737b59c8025f...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Le Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 10:46:23AM +0100, Luk Claes a écrit : > > If the money is used to pay people and the donor is paying for a > specific project where it can know who will get paid, this could be seen > as a work relationship and open a whole other can of worms than we have > dealt with before (outside SPI probably). Just telling you so you are aware. Just to clarify misunderstanding: in this thread, when I wrote “donations” I meant direct money transfer from the sponsor to the developer. I think that money donated to Debian should not be used to pay people. But if Debian developers seek financial support for their activities, we can help them by confirming that their proposal is sound and potentially useful to the Project. And you are right that it is very important to remind to the developpers and the sponsors that receiving money in exchange for a work is usually very regulated, and that we can not do the legal homework for them, nor be libable if they forget to pay their taxes, etc… Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313095752.gg11...@kunpuu.plessy.org
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Charles Plessy wrote: > Le Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : > What I like in your proposal is that the projects will need a donor, as > opposed > to directly use Debian money. I think that showing the capacity of finding a > donor is an important filter before engaging a contractual relationship with > people to deliver software developments. Also it is important to decide the > person and the price at the same time as proposing the project, and leave to > the donor the decision whether the price is reasonable. For an global project > like Debian, it is a very difficult problem to solve, as one hour of > development has radically different costs around the world… If the money is used to pay people and the donor is paying for a specific project where it can know who will get paid, this could be seen as a work relationship and open a whole other can of worms than we have dealt with before (outside SPI probably). Just telling you so you are aware. Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4b9b5eef.9060...@debian.org
Re: Question to all candidates: financing of development
Le Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 08:18:00AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit : > > Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance > Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the > projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the > main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: > - everybody can propose projects to be financed > - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and > by the donors > - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring > tasks Hi Raphaël, I see two separate processes in the infrastructure that you describe above: - A meeting point where project proposers can find potential sponsors. - An endorsment system where the Debian project supports project that meet some criteria. I wonder if there are already existing platforms where projects can be proposed for funding. The Google Summer of Code is a very special example, but there may be more generalist ones. Why not simply use them instead of setting up a new infrastructure? Then for the endorsement, I would propose to nominate delegates after discussion on debian-project, if we find volunteers to deal with the requests for official blessings. What I like in your proposal is that the projects will need a donor, as opposed to directly use Debian money. I think that showing the capacity of finding a donor is an important filter before engaging a contractual relationship with people to deliver software developments. Also it is important to decide the person and the price at the same time as proposing the project, and leave to the donor the decision whether the price is reasonable. For an global project like Debian, it is a very difficult problem to solve, as one hour of development has radically different costs around the world… Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100313083648.ge11...@kunpuu.plessy.org
