Re: a modest proposal - Debian needs more $
On 21-Jan-2002 briand@zipcon.net wrote:
>
> Debian fans,
>
> I have the following modest proposal :
>
> Debian should start charging for high-speed apt-get/dselect/whatever
> downloads from it's sites. 56k is free, anything faster you pay for.
> Then we can pay people to work on the not fun stuff that needs doing.
>
> And people who download ISO's to sell should be paying a LOT.
>
> And this is not a troll.
>
> Debian is worth it, although there has been a lot of grumbling about
> it lately (some of it deserved). I personally would pay (more).
>
> I would like to see more effort directed at the "not fun" stuff in
> development, like error handling, documentation, testing, correctness
> of packaging. People working in their spare time don't like to do
> these sorts of tasks and I don't blame them.
>
> I honestly think that more money could make Debian an even better
> distribution.
>
I have considered this a few times.
Here are the issues I have come up with in no real order:
Developers are scattered around the world. Handling the money transfer, legal
issues, and taxes would be less than fun and require quite a bit more
infrastructure.
Deciding who does with work would also not be trivial.
Setting up any way to accept money would make us setup a greater infrastructure
to support it. Remember, we do not have a home office or a finance department.
Debian is about freedom. Doing something to change this changes what Debian is.
***
Now, with all of that said, I still like the idea of something like the Damian
Conway Perl Serf. We pay a few Debian people a year to hack like crazy.
Sounds doable, we just have to act.
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