Re: [gentoo-project] Encourage donations to Gentoo developers

[Santiago Ferreira]

Hello community, I'm not the most active person, I read the email list and
the forum, please keep them, last year at MozFest I found
https://webmonetization.org/ , that's the most open way that I believe that
could be good to developers, could be something to talk this year at
MozFest https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/ let's think in different ways
to promote Gentoo

Santiago

El jue., 16 de febrero de 2023 4:45 p. m., Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
escribió:

> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 3:02 PM Maciej Barć <xgqt@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Rich!
> >
> > Thanks a lot for reminding the reason why the GF "payments" are a bad
> idea.
> >
> > Do you know what is GF's stance on funding "local" dev HW? I think
> > people inside toolchain/chromium/firefox or other projects requiring a
> > lot of computation power to run various compilation/test configurations
> > could use HW provided/sponsored by the Foundation.
>
> Again, for transparency, I am President of the Gentoo Foundation.
>
> I think we have traditionally two options here:
>  - One is we buy hardware, it's owned by Gentoo (Foundation) and we
> operate it as our asset. We typically do not deploy assets to people's
> homes because there is risk (of that person going away) and because
> the benefit of 'local' hardware are experienced by one person (the
> person in that locality). So value-wise having a 'local' asset is very
> similar to having a hosted asset.
>  - The second is we buy hardware and basically give it to someone.
> This has a few other problems:
>    - Accounting paperwork for having that person as a vendor; the
> developer should likely be treating that machine as income; paying
> taxes on it, etc.
>    - Ethical considerations on allocation of Foundation resources
> (fairness, basically.)
>
> We have traditionally offered hosted resources, which we have done in
> the past and continue to endeavour to do.
> We also have the nitrokey program, where we purchase assets and ship
> them directly to developers:
>  - This is an equal access program, everyone is eligible for 1
> Foundation provided Nitrokey and we ensure we have enough funds to
> cover the entire cost of that program.
>  - Accounting and logistics-wise, the items are so small and so costly
> to run logistics for, we just choose not to do it (so developers who
> leave do not ship their keys back to us.)
>    - It's probable that technically the developers who leave Gentoo
> should record the value of the nitrokey as income, but in most
> jurisdictions the cost is so small it doesn't matter anyway.
>
> I don't believe we have enough money to buy everyone a local
> development rig, and I'm not really sure that program really adds
> significant value over a hosted solution, so I'd likely frame any
> local development around that value-delivery conversation.
>
> -A
>
> >
> > On 2/15/23 23:50, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 5:36 PM Maciej Barć <xgqt@g.o> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I've also heard that GF will never touch this because it is against
> the
> > >> foundation's laws, "because Gentoo cannot pay itself"... shrug.
> > >
> > > No such legal/formal restriction exists (the bylaws even have some
> > > provisions for employees (we don't have any)), but there are many
> > > reasons that this can get messy.
> > >
> > > I personally think it would make way more sense to just make it easy
> > > for developers to list some kind of info about how to donate to them,
> > > and just leave it all up to individuals.
> > >
> > > Offhand some issues with Gentoo handing out "salaries" or anything
> > > close to it are:
> > >
> > > 1. There will be endless debates over who gets how much.  Some
> > > obviously do more than others, and so you either pay everybody the
> > > same and hear grumbling about inactive devs, or pay people based on
> > > activity and then have grumbling or manipulation of the metrics.
> > > 2. Gentoo just doesn't bring in that much money in the first place, so
> > > it would be a lot of arguing over what probably will end up being $50
> > > here and $100 there.
> > > 3. Now you have a ton of tax overhead, potentially in many
> > > jurisdictions.  Reimbursing expenses at least in the US isn't taxed,
> > > but when you start paying people for contributions you have a bunch of
> > > legal issues.
> > > 4. Then you just have the general volunteer culture.  Gentoo currently
> > > is an all-volunteer organization, and as such has a certain culture.
> > > If you look at FOSS organizations that tend to pay substantial amounts
> > > of people you end up with professional management and so on.  That
> > > isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is a big change.
> > >
> > > It just is an issue that I don't think anybody wants to go near.  If
> > > people want to donate to their favorite dev I doubt anybody would be
> > > bothered.  It just doesn't make sense to have the foundation operate
> > > as a payment processor when you have lots of companies that offer
> > > exactly that service, or things like cryptocurrency if you want to go
> > > that route.
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Have a great day!
> >
> > ~ Maciej XGQT Barć
> >
> > xgqt@g.o
> > Gentoo Linux developer
> > (emacs, math, ml, scheme, sci)
>
>