Re: Discussion on Guix funding // future

[Steve George <steve@futurile.net>]

Hi,

On 25 Oct, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote:
(...)

> I think we should try to invest more on the people, and that probably means
> paying them for the work they do. At least to some, so they can invest more
> time and care in others.
(...)

> Many people has been thanklessly working for this project, and some will
> continue to anyway, but not having a proper funding model is probably
> keeping us in an uncomfortable situation. The lack of people is pushing away
> new people, and we are in a vicious circle where I think people that are
> less stubborn than me just go spend time on other projects.
(...)

For a small project "paying people" brings up the area of contributor motivation:

1. Does funding contributors improve a project?
2. Does funding contributors motivate them?

For (1) the answering is unsurprisingly that projects can get more done if they are sustainable. Linux Foundation's contributor survey found that about 50% of contributors in FOSS are paid [1].

Tidelift have a series of surveys that are worth reading. The summary is that paid developers implement tedious but important maintenance activities like security and documentation. It confirms what we all know implicitly, if it's your personal hobby time you'll do what's fun, whereas in work we all do work that we don't enjoy but we know is necessary [2].

One concern with supporting developers is whether it demotivates them in the long-term: from intrinsic to extrinisic motivation. Basically, the answer is that pay doesn't motivate but it does 'enable' for committed contributors: the Linux foundation survey shows this, there's also various academic pieces on FOSS motivation.

> I think free software projects use to be precarious and we are too used to
> that. However, I think we should try to break with that image, and try to
> push for funding collectively, so we can cover structural costs: people and
> machines.
> 
> I think I'm just somehow sharing my will to help, and also trying to
> encourage some conversation about the funding and how we could do better. If
> anyone has ideas, please share.

Before we can discuss whether the project *should do something*, we have to know whether it actually can do something. Whether it has the structure and capabilities.

I believe the Guix Foundation (https://foundation.guix.info/) is the mechanism that can be used to raise funds for the project. 

But, I don't understand the legal and operational constraints it's operating under. For example:

- Can it accept donations from anyone world-wide?
- Can it represent the project when applying for grants?
- Are there limitations on what it's allowed to fund?
- Are there operational limitations? (banking is a problem?)

I know Simon, Tanguy, Andreas, Julien and others have worked hard on this, so that's to be appreciated.

If it's in a good place then there's lots we could do to try and attract donations and support.

It's quite hard to find European associations as a basis for comparison. But, as an example in 2023 KDE raised 450,000 Euros, and spent about 70% (3167) on paid contractors/reimbursements, with additional money spent on user/developer events and sprints. See [3]

I'm not saying Guix would be at that kind of level, but it's food for thought on what's possible!

Steve / Futurile

[1] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/resources/publications/foss-contributor-2020 (download doesn't require registration)
[2] https://blog.tidelift.com/paid-maintainers-do-more-maintenance-and-documentation-work (the full survey download is behind a registration)
[3] https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2023/