On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 12:27:40PM +0000, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> There's more source conflict: if there's a micropayment button on
> packages.debian.org, how will the money be divided between members of a
> packaging team? People who do NMUs? Should people who report
> particularly useful bugs be rewarded, too? What about people who
> maintain the Debian infrastructure?
AOL.
This, in fact is the main risk for our community that I see coming from
Flattr (and yes, this comment is obviously specific to Flattr rather
than generic). Let's assume that nowadays the given maintenance team of
package "foo" is composed by developers X, Y. Great, they have been
doing all the work up to now, they are fully entitled to be flattr-ed
and share the gain among them. Then, tomorrow, a new enthusiastic
developer, Z, start working on package maintenance. At which point he
gets the right of asking a share of the gain? Should it be equally
distributed among X, Y, and Z, or not?
The mere possibility of this scenario and of the debates and unhappiness
that can descend from it, is enough to scare me away from the idea of
mass Flattr in the context of FOSS.
There aren't many chances of musing about the characteristics of a pure
gift-economy, but when those chances come, let's appreciate the
important *advantages* gift-economies have over other models.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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