Re: KickStarter for Debian packages - crowdfunding/donations for development
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Arno Töll <arno@debian.org> wrote:
> 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.
(in the last sentence, I meant "Debian project", I see now that this
might be mistaken as refering to upstream.)
> 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.
My train of thought is that I will never be able to accept money for the
package 'apt'. Sure, I might do some stuff, but this package is 17 years old,
has seen contribution from all round the world and all that. What would give
me the right to claim it rather than anyone else who has ever worked on it.
And even if you haven't worked directly on it, we still have dependencies,
be it code wise or infrastructure (hardware, people, …). It can't be my job
as the maintainer¹ to rate the contribution of everyone even only remotely
involved to decide who is getting, who isn't and how much exactly.
(¹ which I am not, but lets keep it simple here)
Thankfully, 'apt' is a native package, so it has by default an entity which
accepts donations and is able to divide the money raised in a good way
across all involved people by sponsoring meetings, hardware and stuff.
And I believe the same entity should collect money channeled to "us" for
packaging non-native software rather than to individual maintainers.
I have on the other hand accepted money for working on APT (e.g. as GSoC
student) so the concept of APT being a magical cash-cow I can milk isn't
completely alien for me, but for me there is a difference between claiming
that I am the one who should get the money if you like the package and
being up for hire if you need something to like it (even more) – even
though its on the etch of being double-think.
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
Reply to: