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John Alberts wrote: |
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> On Feb 16, 2008 11:07 PM, Steve Long wrote: |
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>> An idea: why not allow users to pay a nominal fee, say $10 per year, to |
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>> have a "contributor" badge on the forums, with zero other benefit? |
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> |
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> I think this is an excellent idea. There should be minimal effort |
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> needed to add this functionality to the forums and there is $0 |
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> overhead for each purchase of a badge. It should also be possible to |
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> subscribe using paypal, so the fee can be charged yearly. |
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Indeed, it /should/ all be relatively easy to setup for the return. |
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|
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> Having two |
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> or three levels would also be nice and have different contributor |
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> badges for each level. You could have a normal contributor badge, |
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> silver, and gold. |
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> |
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I'm not personally into that, which was why I mentioned one small single |
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level, since it starts to draw distinctions based on how much people pay. |
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That starts to feel not as friendly, to my mind. None of this money is needed |
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to pay developers; although that'd be nice, it's not what this is about, and |
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would entail a much larger change, one I'm not sure would be healthy. It's |
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more for stuff like hiring professionals to do the other work, buy equipment |
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and bandwidth, and provide money for events and so on. As such I think a |
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nominal (for developed countries) contribution is perfectly acceptable, and |
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doesn't lead to any pressure. Anything more and we start to get into the "I |
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paid for this, I expect <foo>" which is what we definitely want to avoid. |
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|
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There's no reason Gentoo couldn't accept such contributions in whatever |
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currency with local offices to manage events, eg in India or China, with the |
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level set according to the local conditions. After all, in many places, $10 |
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(well 10EU nowadays, given the state of the US deficit ;) is more than a |
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wage. Blue-sky, I know. |
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|
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> Seems that this thread has really turned into a 'How to improve Gentoo |
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> thread' rather than 'How to improve the trustees' thread. ;) |
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> |
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Heh, yeah; as Mr Thomson pointed out, fundraising is in the Trustees' remit, |
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as well as the social and legal sides. Hopefully with a more proactive group |
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meeting regularly (and more interest from users in the Foundation), those |
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other aspects can be dealt with, so long as they don't infringe on the |
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development process, which is working well imo. I see it as support for the |
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developers rather than anything else. |
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-- |
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