Re: Discussion on Guix funding // future

[Steve George <steve@futurile.net>]

On 25 Oct, Efraim Flashner wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 11:11:31AM +0200, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> > Steve George <steve@futurile.net> writes:
> > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > Paying some people also has the potential of eroding motivation for
> > those who are not paid.
> > 
> > *Employing* people and having their salaries be paid from donations held
> > by a foundation is a can of worms that I personally would shy away from
> > opening.  An easier and less daunting way to inject monetary rewards
> > into volunteer-based activities is to fund awards for certain
> > accomplishments.  This would strip all the complications of employment
> > and still allow for less desirable work to be rewarded.
> 
> I can no longer find the reference, but Debian experimented with having
> someone (or several someones, its been many years now) paid to fix
> release-critical bugs before one of their releases. That release went
> out about 2 months "later" than other releases, with the assumption
> being that few people were willing to do the work for free that someone
> was explicitly being paid for.
(...)

Interesting, didn't know about this, I'll see if I can find it.

Generally, I've seen the converation about "sustainability" in projects change in the last few years. The focus that 'Github Sponsors', Linux Foundation and some of the security issues brought to the issue has had an impact. This has made people much more of the need for sustainability and more likely to help out. Projects have responded - as one example, Open Collective has 2533 open source projects that are receiving donations.

> I'm worried about some sort of "recognition of exemplary work" pay-out,
> it suggests that others' work isn't exemplary enough for recognition and
> commiseration.

Yeah agreed, that wouldn't be a great idea. What the surveys say works is work that *volunteers* do not want to do, or cannot do.

> The best I can think of currently is to offer grants for travel to
> events (FOSDEM, etc) or to help fund computers and/or office furniture
> with the belief that it would make their contributions easier/faster or
> more productive. With the idea of paying for things, not paying people
> directly for their time.

Understood and seems to be a common way of supporting contributors. Both FreeBSD and KDE supported contributors computing and travel expenses.

There's other approaches that could be tried, that don't involve creating an "exemplary work" divide. I think we can be open to experimentation. It's OK to tell people we're experimenting and try things out. And, if something doesn't work try something else or decide it doesn't work in our context. If we only do the same things, in the same way, we'll get the same (reproducible?!) results ;-)

Steve / Futurile

[0] https://opencollective.com/opensource