Gentoo Archives: gentoo-nfp

From: Steve Long <slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-nfp] Re: Re: Re: Re: How to improve the trustees
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:47:08
Message-Id: 200802172154.33644.slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk
1 John Alberts wrote:
2 > On Feb 16, 2008 11:07 PM, Steve Long wrote:
3 >> An idea: why not allow users to pay a nominal fee, say $10 per year, to
4 >> have a "contributor" badge on the forums, with zero other benefit?
5 >
6 > I think this is an excellent idea. There should be minimal effort
7 > needed to add this functionality to the forums and there is $0
8 > overhead for each purchase of a badge. It should also be possible to
9 > subscribe using paypal, so the fee can be charged yearly.
10 Indeed, it /should/ all be relatively easy to setup for the return.
11
12 > Having two
13 > or three levels would also be nice and have different contributor
14 > badges for each level. You could have a normal contributor badge,
15 > silver, and gold.
16 >
17 I'm not personally into that, which was why I mentioned one small single
18 level, since it starts to draw distinctions based on how much people pay.
19 That starts to feel not as friendly, to my mind. None of this money is needed
20 to pay developers; although that'd be nice, it's not what this is about, and
21 would entail a much larger change, one I'm not sure would be healthy. It's
22 more for stuff like hiring professionals to do the other work, buy equipment
23 and bandwidth, and provide money for events and so on. As such I think a
24 nominal (for developed countries) contribution is perfectly acceptable, and
25 doesn't lead to any pressure. Anything more and we start to get into the "I
26 paid for this, I expect <foo>" which is what we definitely want to avoid.
27
28 There's no reason Gentoo couldn't accept such contributions in whatever
29 currency with local offices to manage events, eg in India or China, with the
30 level set according to the local conditions. After all, in many places, $10
31 (well 10EU nowadays, given the state of the US deficit ;) is more than a
32 wage. Blue-sky, I know.
33
34 > Seems that this thread has really turned into a 'How to improve Gentoo
35 > thread' rather than 'How to improve the trustees' thread. ;)
36 >
37 Heh, yeah; as Mr Thomson pointed out, fundraising is in the Trustees' remit,
38 as well as the social and legal sides. Hopefully with a more proactive group
39 meeting regularly (and more interest from users in the Foundation), those
40 other aspects can be dealt with, so long as they don't infringe on the
41 development process, which is working well imo. I see it as support for the
42 developers rather than anything else.
43 --
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