Re: PaySwarm-based Debian donations
On Mon, 2013-06-17 at 19:44 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> They are not the same thing at all. The social effects
> are almost completely different.
It's not a false equivalence. Participation is not just about being a
programmer, if you can convince a programmer to get involved on your
behalf, then you are involved. If you are given no opportunity to become
involved then what's the difference?
> The case has been made multiple times in this thread: out-of-band
> transactions are not socially distortive to the same degree because
> they are not officially endorsed or routed by the project.
The case was stated, it wasn't made. There are problems with money (just
like any power), all sorts of social problems might happen. All the more
reason why we should start now finding our way through this maze, even
if tens of economic projects fail; it'd still be worth continuing with
the experiments.
> Those are not simple or transparent constructs, and they
> carry significant social weight and influence. Some aspects of that
> influence are directly contrary to the motivations and goals that many
> Debian contributors have seen in the project.
It's that social weight and influence that is what 'paying for' things
means. If the money is paying for things that are contrary to the Debian
developer consensus then there users who disagree with that direction.
Either that or some rich user was allowed to pour forth at one time to
mess with the scales.
Avoiding money is a way to avoid having users direct things. I get that.
I just think users should be involved in that way. I don't even
understand why secretive manipulation outside is preferable to open
transparency inside. The arguments are boggling.
Seeing the responses here. I don't think Debian is ready yet. All we'd
like really is for Debian to get out of the way of upstreams and provide
the platform for getting money (and developers) to projects as neatly as
possible and in a friendly a way as possible.
Martin,
P.S. Please do not link to Fox News UK (Daily Mail), it does not have
the credibility to count as anything more than bile.
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