It's hard to do business with unknown people. That's the case here from
possible donnors/patrons to Riley and vice-versa. It's much easier if there's
a trusted intermediary.
Riley Baird:
I'm very glad that you're interested in free software. I support commercial
development of free software. However, I think that you're misguided in the
way you're raising funds for your work. The main problem with publishing a
binary-only ISO image is that it doesn't respect the user's rights (The 4
freedoms), in other words, it's proprietary software. Additionally, from what
I understand, users can't verify that the system you offer works as intended
from the binary ISO image, since it doesn't includes source code or can be
installed, it's incomplete, and hence can't be checked. With Linux-libre you
can see the scripts that have been used to deblob and check whether any blob
remains, which isn't possible with the published LibertyBSD image from what I
understand.
I would be glad to see that you succeed in commercially contributing to free
software, without distributing proprietary software. I propose a means that I
think you can use to raise funds for your work more effectively, and reduce
the uncertainty that some people interested in LibertyBSD may have of being
scammed:
Stop distributing the binary ISO image.
Further donations would be made to a Bitcoin address overseen by an escrow
composed by members that you and the free software community generally
trusts[1] while the following process is undergoing:
Make a written specification in which you describe at depth what you offer.
Here's an incomplete list of questions that the specification should answer,
in my opinion:
Does LibertyBSD meets the GNU FSDG to the best of your knowledge? If not, on
which point is it not compliant?. Bear in mind that there may be
recommendations of proprietary software scattered in free programs, did you
made an effort to remove them?.
what system it's based on (OpenBSD version, patches applied, and additional
software included, if any)?
What is the difference of features? I see that you already mentioned that it
works only on x86-64 in the project page, but an complete list is better.
What's the software that was included/removed/modified? For modified
software, how many lines were modified[2]? Are all of those changes of your
authorship?. Under which license are they released?. This is very important,
as it gives interested parties an idea of how much work was done.
Was the system rebranded? If so, which packages have been modified for
rebranding?, and also include a sample of the artwork.
In my proposal, you would make such a specification and publish it for a
public comments period in which people may ask whether LibertyBSD does
something that you haven't specified, or suggest clarifications of your
specification; you would then modify the specification at your sole
discretion given this feedback (or chose to ignore all feedback). The point
with this is that you have an opportunity to clarify doubts and arrive at a
specification satisfactory to you and the possible donnors or patrons.
After the comments period, if enough money was sent to the escrow address,
you would send the final version of the specification (which would be public)
and the complete LibertyBSD (As would be published) to an escrow. If not
enough money has been sent, then you have the option to wait until all the
money you originally asked for is raised before submitting LibertyBSD to the
escrow, or send it anyway to the escrow
At your option, you can publish and timestamp a cryptographic hash of the
submission *before* sending it to the escrow. This make is less likely that
the escrow will cheat, since you can prove that you had the submission before
they did. They can't rebrand LibertyBSD and successfully claim that developed
it, for instance.
After receiving LibertyBSD, the escrow evaluates whether it meets the
specification, and if so, releases the money to you, otherwise, if it
contains minor problems you'd have a period of time known in advance to fix
them (14 days for example). In case you failed to meet the specifications
within the allowance period, the escrow returns the money to donors, or sends
it to another end, chosen in advance (for instance, the Free Software
Foundation).
Of course, the escrow must be a non-empty set of people who free software
supporters generally trust, you trust, would be willing to offer his work as
escrow and know enough about OpenBSD to perform this evaluation.
The Bitcoin pay-to-script can be used to make sure that a minority of the
members of the escrow can't cripple the process by requiring the signature of
more than half the escrow members to act on the money. I think that it may be
possible to additionally make the Bitcoin address correspond to an script
that allows the received money to be released only to you or the FSF (for
example), but not to any other Bitcoin address.
Doing the fundraising this way gives more confidence to the interested
parties while making it less likely that either you or the escrows will
defraud, while it avoid the problem of publishing a proprietary version of
your work that doesn't accomplishes the goal of proving that the system works
as intended.
This proposal is incomplete, some points require opinions and further
thought, and must be made clear before the process begins. An incomplete list
is: Which people would act as the escrow? I ask the community to state their
opinion, and to offer to volunteer as members of the escrow, especially to
those who have contributed to free software already. What would be the public
comments period and the allowance period? I suggest 30 days for the former
and 14 for the later, but I suggest to start the fundraising on 2015, since
the FSF is currently running an fundraising campaing and some people who want
to donate to free software may split the amount between to only one of
LibertyBSD or the FSF (possibly giving zero to either, which is less
efficient for both projects). What would happen to the funds if you fail to
meet the specificaion in time? I suggest that in such a case, the funds
should be donated to the FSF, since that
way the effort of collecting funds isn't wasted. What would be the exact
Bitcoin script?. I don't have much experience with this, so I can't give a
suggestion on the details of it.
All of this must be agreed in advance. Riley: If you agree to this proposal
please state the specific terms on which you agree to it. I recommend waiting
until some interested members give their feedback before you deceide on which
specific terms to accept the proposal.
Thanks to Jason Self (jxself) for his feedback on this proposal. I made some
modifications accordingly before posting.
[1]: I said “generally trust” rather than “trust” because given that
the set of free software supporters is large and uncentralized, it's not
possible to say something for sure about them regarding whom they trust, so I
don't want to imply otherwise.
[2]: Not counting aesthetic changes such as formatting, and provided that
they're coded as common practice. You should state in your specifications
that the changes follow “common practice” in the sense that you didn't
split what normally would be a single line of code in as as many as possible
(one per character) or similar to artificially increase the modified/added
line count.
