Re: KickStarter for Debian packages - crowdfunding/donations for development
On 06/14/2013 05:36 AM, Martin Owens wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-06-13 at 23:03 -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
>> We have never needed it
>
> Such a mechanism would never be needed if the only people Debian
> should serve are technical users who are able to involve themselves
> in the project when they need it.
>
> Excluding people with money is just another way of excluding people
> from Free Software development. I'm not so sure it's been as healthy
> for us or our users as assumed here.
I think this is an excellent point. The people that use Debian, more
specifically Ubuntu, are not always capable of jumping in and doing the
technical work themselves. It would be nice to give them a way to
contribute (donations), or promote work they want to see happen (bounties).
Even if there are some developers that oppose monetary contribution in
any form, there are others that would love to develop for Debian more
(but can't feed their families on volunteering). That is, it's important
to not encode a personal opinion in software that silences those that
have a different opinion.
We can build this system such that those that don't want any donations
can pass it on to the Debian Project, or reject all donations outright.
We can also build this system such that those that would like donations
can state exactly how they want the donation to be split up among the
project participants. This approach ends up being fair to both sides and
doesn't silence either opinion.
-- 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/
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