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

[Kent Fredric]

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.