Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery
Hi. With respect, I'd like to challenge the idea that integrating more
ways to get funded would undermine some core aspect of Debian.
I think there are two aspects that I consider when I think about the idea
that Debian is not funded by a particular company:
1) Independence. Many people join Debian as a member of the community
and their actions in the community are motivated by goals that last
beyond a particular job and that we are able to act independently of
large commercial interests.
2) On the other hand I'm concerned that Debian developers can be under
funded. We want to get more people involved in free software and
Debian. We want to encourage sources of funding that are independent,
allowing people who want to be independent to actually be independent
and to find ways to make that work for them successfully. The aspects
of independence I care about are actually enhanced if it is easier to
find funding for doing Debian work.
In my mind, finding initiatives like this that allow our members to
easily find funding for their work would significantly benefit the
community. As an example, I think it would be great if people working
on core tools like Apt, Dpkg, Debhelper, had the option of accepting
funding for their work from diverse sources. I think that finding ways
to foster that option for parts of our community who want it would be
very good. The stuff we do actually does cost money. And running away
from that rather than trying to hulp out community members who would
like to be funded actually gives more power to members of our community
who work for corporations or who are able to organize significant blocks
of money for a particular purpose. I don't think that is a huge problem
in our community; I value the contributions of corporations who allow
their employees to spend significant tim on Debian. But I also value
spending effort making other options possible.
--Sam
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