Hi,
krystof@ibse.cz wrote on 31/01/2023 at 10:51:10+0100:
Hello everyone,
I ran into argument with my father about who pays Debian
developement. He says everyone want to eat something and since only
donation won't cut it, corporations and companies which use Debian
need to fund the developement. I understand that some task like kernel
maintanace are full-time job and someone needs to pay those people,
but I always thaught that since Debian is community software project,
most of the work comes from volunteers and enthusiasts. So my qustion
is - how does it actually work? Thank you for your answers.
Best regards,
Debian is a volunteer-run project and therefore, the standard situation
is that people who build and maintain the Debian Ecosystem are doing it
for free. True, some people are allowed by their employeer to do it on
their work time, which could be seen as a sponsorship of the project,
and there's even some who are paid specifically by their employeer to
package some stuff in Debian, but this is not the majority of the
Contributors.
So, on the specific aspect of the development, I guess we can agree that
it's, indeed, *NOT* funded by any corporation.
That being said, many companies are making donations to the project (or,
to be specific, to its Trusted Organizations - SPI/Debian
France/Debian.ch), as a sponsorship, and to help the project covering
its hosting costs (we need servers, hosting places, etc, to provide our
websites and our packages/installers/...).
There are also individuals making such donations.
That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project. At best it can be used to reimburse some
specific expenses the Developer would make to contribute to the project
(a flight ticket to go to a BSP, some specific hardware, ...).
I hope this makes things clearer.