Re: Using money to fund real Debian work
On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:00:12 +0200, Jérôme Marant <jerome@marant.org> said:
> Le lundi 09 octobre 2006 18:54, Martin Schulze a écrit :
>> hard on getting Debian better be funded similarily? I know that
>> several people have lost their motivation to work on Debian as
>> before (yes, others will hate me for writing this again) because of
>> this. Some developers ask themselves already why they should work
>> on some tasks, when others are to be paid for their Debian work,
>> and they have other obligations as well.
> You never loose your motivation because some developers get paid to
> work on Debian tasks, unless you're jealous.
So some people are jealous. That's basic human nature -- in a
project with 1000 developers, most common traits of human nature
shall be encountered.
And, no, you are wrong about jealousy as the only concern --
though I applaud the tactic of framing the discussion around
jealousy, that is a masterful debating tactic.
The other concern is social dynamics -- Debian was born peer
based volunteer environment, with the social dynamics appropriate to
that. The interactions between peers and colleagues is different from
interactions between employees and supervisors/bosses; and with the
ability of some Debian developers having the ability to direct
funding to others introduces the employer-employee dynamic into the
mix.
It also shifts the criteria for electing which area one
concentrates on in Debian -- no one in Debian is likely to pay for
things like introducing Globus to Debian. So, in order to improve the
chances of future employability by Debian, there are areas of effort
that is not worth going into. You might argue that this does not
matter.
I have also seen people equating money == time -- and
forgetting to add the assumptions behind that statement. Money is
only equal to time when one is getting paid. When one is laid off,
money is far more welcome than someone helping out with the project;
so If person a is unemployed, and person A and person B are working
on tasks for debian, and person B gets paid -- well, person A is not
gonna feel like person B just got a helper. Getting a herlpr does not
help pay rent.
So there is a fundamental difference between getting paid by
debian, or getting someone to help out on a debian task; trying to
eliminate the distinction is specious.
manoj
--
"I've been trey-dueced." An Algonquinite with a hand of threes and
twos
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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