Quoting Helmut Grohne (2019-05-31 07:17:07)
> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:46:48AM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> > On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
> >
> > I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> > though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
>
> I tend to concur with Raphael and Holger here. We've learned a few
> lessons, but that doesn't mean it cannot work. Indeed, I argue that
> "we" are paying developers now and you just didn't notice.
>
> Freexian was already mentioned. But the Linux Foundation is also
> paying people to make Debian reproducible. They're putting a similar
> amount of money into Debian.
>
> While Canonical maintains Ubuntu, they also pay a number of people who
> work on Debian directly and often times push their work into Debian
> first. I think we can honestly say that Debian wouldn't be where it is
> today without Canonical's support in a positive sense.
>
> A number of people report their activities on planet.d.o and some
> disclose which parts of their work are being paid. It turns out that
> some fraction of maintenance cost is performed on company time.
>
> What all of these have in common is that it's some external (to
> Debian) entity that decides which work ends up being done and that it
> is the business of that external entity to source the relevant money.
> The decision who is being paid is externalized from the Debian project
> and that is a quite strong difference to dunc tank.
>
> So if someone were to run a "Fix problems in Debian" company and were
> able to source money for doing so, I think that'd actually work. I'm
> less convinced that we can use Debian money for this in any way. But
> we can still tell people: If you want to improve X in Debian, consider
> donating to Y.
>
> In a sense, I'm arguing that this money business should be
> decentralized. And it already is.
There is a big difference between "Debian people get paid" and "Debian
pays Debian people". The former was always the case, the latter is
problematic.
Debian is a community (involving participants some doing business).
Debian is not a business, and should not become a business!
- Jonas
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
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