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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