Hi, On Samstag, 15. Juni 2013, Russ Allbery wrote: > There were some past experiments with this in Debian, and they caused a > lot of social controversy. > > One of the problems with paying for work in the Debian context is that > we're a world-wide project that welcomes contributions from everyone as > equally as we can manage. I think this is one of the major strengths of > the project. For the most part, we can ignore such things as differences > in compensation rates in different parts of the world. But if we get into > paying for work, that immediately highlights that amounts that are > inadequate to pay for skilled time in some areas where there are project > contributors are far more than a typical wage in other areas. This > creates, or at least highlights, an awkward inequality in the project. > > Another problem is that when some people are paid for doing the same work > that other people are doing on a volunteer basis, it creates a lot of > tension that's difficult to manage. While this is true anyway (for > example, my employer pays me to do some packaging work), currently it's > quite indirect, and the payment isn't officially blessed by the project or > part of the project structure. Every contributor to Debian just manages > their finances in their own ways. I think the tension gets much worse if > the project is explicitly deciding to pay some people and not others. FWIW I share these concerns and also don't like the idea to as a project endorse ways to give money to developers. I don't want to see money persons join Debian and I dont want see people leave Debian because of it. I also dont want to see people fight over money. ("Hey, I must maintain this software because I deserve the money users pay for it.") Donations to Debian OTOH, which benefit all developers (by paying for hardware, developer sprints, etc) are very much welcome. cheers, Holger
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