Re: [gentoo-project] Extending Social Contract to guarantee that Gentoo will remain volunteer work

[M. J. Everitt]

On 26/01/17 23:12, Kent Fredric wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2017 16:03:17 +0100
> Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>
>> The main idea is to protect volunteers spending their time on Gentoo.
>> I don't want to learn one day that my opinion doesn't matter anymore
>> because a new lead (Council, Trustees, Board, BDFL or any other
>> possible future form) decides that they/he/she will use the donation
>> money to hire paid workers doing the Gentoo work that they desire.
>>
>> I believe that any possible lead Gentoo might elect in the future
>> should still represent the whole Gentoo community, and the community
>> should have the right to refuse to follow the directions set by
>> the lead if he/she stops listening to the community. As volunteers,
>> we have the right to refuse to do something that in our opinion harms
>> Gentoo.
>>
>> Sadly, this could become pointless if the leading bodies keep the power
>> to hire people to work on Gentoo for money. This means that effectively
>> they have the power to spend Gentoo money on pursuing their own goals
>> as long as they can legally claim that the work is done for
>> the benefit of Gentoo. In volunteer-based project, they effectively
>> have to *convince* others to work on their ideas and/or spend
>> a significant effort working on them themselves.
>>
>> The other part is pretty much a formality, that means to make it clear
>> that Gentoo is not supposed to be bribed by third-party companies to
>> alter its course. I don't think it really changes anything but it looks
>> like a nice thing to state.
>>
>> I should note that this doesn't mean to prevent anyone from being paid
>> by third parties to work on Gentoo, or receive any money on account of
>> what he did or is doing for Gentoo. I think that's fine as long as
>> the wider Gentoo community has the right to reject any work that it
>> sees unfit.
> I fear this suggestion will have the exact opposite effect to that intended.
>
> If its not possible to invest money in developers to improve Gentoo, then
> you're guaranteeing that every developer who contributes to Gentoo must do
> so under the assumption that they get their income elsewhere.
>
> Which might demand that in order to survive, somebody will have to work for some
> company in order to survive, and the company will absorb much of their time,
> time which they could be contributing to Gentoo, which they must instead focus into
> private enterprise.
>
> And that may also force the developer to focus their development efforts for Gentoo
> in ways that profit only their employer, while not caring about the user base of Gentoo.
>
> And this is a huge problem in OSS these days.
>
> The inability to survive on it in a Captialist World basically makes opensource an
> adversary of survial.
>
> I myself know of people who have small mounds of personal debt in the interest of looking
> after their opensource objectives, and its just not sustainable.
>
> To the point that, as long as we live in this world, we *need* infrastructure in place
> to guarantee that we have the resources to ensure we have developers for the projects
> that need to be done.
>
> Until then, you're basically hedging bets on people being able to scalp company time for gentoo,
> betting on people being able to live two lives so they can help gentoo, betting on the developers
> ability to obtain welfare to support themselves while they contribute to gentoo, or betting on
> a relatively distant future where the world is progressive enough to create UBI.
>
> Its burning the candle at both ends in the mean time, while median income declines vs inflation
> in many countries, making your developer base atrophy as it becomes progressively harder to
> support yourself and have energy to contribute.
>
+1

Well articulated and summarised, thanks Kent.