Re: KickStarter for Debian packages - crowdfunding/donations for development
On 06/14/2013 05:24 PM, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 05:14:27PM -0400, Manu Sporny wrote:
>> I agree, which is why the payment details live completely outside
>> the Debian systems. The only thing you'd need to initiate payment
>> is an e-mail address, or a PaySwarm financial account address,
>> which looks like this:
>>
>> https://dev.payswarm.com/i/manu/accounts/public-account
>
> Interesting. So one would have to set up a payswarm instance to
> collect, or piggy back on a public instance?
You would piggy back on a public instance. Basically, you'd pick a
payment provider (kinda like you pick your grocery store, school, or
bank today). You would pick a payment processor you trust, and since
they're using PaySwarm, they're guaranteed to inter-operate with every
other PaySwarm-compatible payment processor out there.
We're also considering supporting financial account re-directs from a
personal website (as long as it's served over HTTPS). You could setup a
re-direct from your personal website to a URL on your payment provider.
There's isn't much advantage in doing this other than you being in full
control of your financial accounts in the event that your payment
provider goes rogue and/or freezes your account.
>> requirements when you process payments; know your customer (KYC) is
>> one of them. There are also anti-money laundering regulations that
>> you must ensure you follow to comply with the law. All of these
>> things are things
>
> Which law? US law? We're an international org, are the laws standard
> worldwide? We have Developers in every jurisdiction you can imagine
> :)
If you want to get very technical about it, the "law" is the combination
of all local, state, and federal laws applicable to the financial
transaction. What you're exchanging, how you're exchanging it, who is
exchanging it, trade embargoes... all of these things apply when you're
doing a financial transaction. So yes, it's a complicated problem due to
all the laws that apply, which is why payment processors exist.
>> Right, which is why one solution is making it up to the package
>> maintainers and software authors to figure out how payments should
>> be split up. I think we all agree that tips should be distributed
>> based on merit and that the maintainers have a pretty good idea of
>> how that should go. In the event that the maintainers and upstream
>> can't come to an agreement, they could always just opt to send the
>> donation upstream to the Debian Project.
>
> Right, but this leads to one of two things:
Wouter Verhelst had an excellent response to your concerns. There was a
counter to his line of argumentation, which I'll respond to shortly.
>>> Payment systems in general tend to lead to "paybullying", which
>>> is something I'd really (really) like to avoid. I've always loved
>>> how un-corporate the Debian community is.
>>
>> I agree that we really don't want that. Any suggestions about how
>> we might be able to avoid it?
>
> I'm not sure, but I've seen at least one high-profile F/OSS project
> maintainer (with project email, writing from it) saying "I've written
> a patch for this bug, it's done, but you need to give me money before
> I release it". Putting an official system into place might make this
> more common / easier to make look "official".
I don't quite understand. I thought your concern was preventing that
sort of behavior, not condoning it?
That is, this is my read from the community so far:
People holding patches for ransom seems to be bad form and
anti-community. People stating that they'd like to work on X, but would
like to be paid for the work is better. People doing the work for free
and retroactively getting a donation for it is better. All donations to
large teams going to the Debian project seems to be the least
controversial solution (ignoring the fact that upstream developers don't
see any of that money).
I'm formulating a proposal that attempts to address all of the concerns
raised so far in this thread. More later...
-- manu
--
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/
Reply to: