Hi, On 14.06.2013 15:52, David Kalnischkies wrote: > She/he is doing a lot of work for sure, but I appreciate the software, not > that it is packaged with this. That I can get this software easily while > using Debian is something the whole project is responsible for, not just > the person who happens to maintain this specific package, so appreciation > for the package itself should go to the project as a whole. I disagree. Some packages make _a lot_ of work and some people spend thousands of hours to make Debian an excellent distribution and the package in particular useful and maintainable. This is in many cases not less work than being upstream, it's just another type of work which is often invisible. Not saying we should implement a user interface for (micro-) donations to Debian package maintainers, but I'm sure people being grown up enough to become contractually capable, are also able to differentiate whether they would like to donate to upstream or to the distributor and both deserve their part of the cake. Now, if comes up to discuss whether we should proxy donations from people to maintainers I'm unsure. I'd rather be in favor of collecting these donations to a common pool and divide it equal amongst maintainers who opt-in for very simple reasons: * Opt-In for the reason Mr. Tagliamonte mentioned: Some of us are pseudonymous identities, some may not want to share bank account data etc. * A maintainer is not responsible alone for the work. Personally I cannot value enough the tremendous work the Security Team spends with packages I and $boss uses daily for profit. * A maintainer builds his work on the shoulders of others, like you, being the APT maintainer, like maintainers of dependencies, like the Release Team hating your debdiffs. And, of course, our non-uploading DDs who spend lots of time to maintain the website, make translations, etc. * Obviously some very important packages virtually get zero attention. You know, people donate what they see, be it apache2 (taken because I maintain this), but who would donate for libz we depend upon? This is an imbalance to have in mind. However, is all of that a reason not to accept money from people at all? I don't think so. We should just ensure it's fair and balanced _within_ Debian and clear to people donating that the money goes (to what fraction) to whom. -- with kind regards, Arno Töll IRC: daemonkeeper on Freenode/OFTC GnuPG Key-ID: 0x9D80F36D
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