From: Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech>
To: "guix-devel\\@gnu.org" <guix-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Discussion on Guix funding // future
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:08:18 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6daee7b4-a5d6-4f80-bbfa-995e65e17ae0@elenq.tech> (raw)
Hi,
Recently I've been discussing with other members of the Guix community
about several things we consider we could be improved.
The most important one in my opinion is the funding. I don't know (does
anybody know?) how Guix is funded, and it worries me.
I've been funded to work on the bootstrapping part of Guix by NlNet
grants. I've been extremely lucky, and I'm very grateful for it. And I
tried to spread the money, paying people who deserved it.
Grants are great for specific issues, but we are not going to make Guix
survive using only that kind of grants.
First of all, these grants don't pay much, and they are just for a year
or so. Many of us have the technical skills to get a job that pays way
more than a grant and is way more stable. This makes doing something
ethical and good become a punishment, and it's forcing many people to
choose. Most of the people don't have the privilege to choose.
Second, grants work kind of well for specific tasks, but what happens
with the structural work? Is anybody actually getting paid for it?
Finally, grants push individuals to try to do things, but don't
encourage collective action (also the amounts are not high enough for
collective action). That's not necessarily bad, but those individual
projects also drain energy from those who are structural to Guix.
Patches have to be reviewed, and commits need to be merged.
On a side note, I think we are missing reviewers, maintainers and
commiters, and I think that view is shared in the community. Let's use
my case as an example: I raised my hand to become a commiter, and I
don't know how that was lost in the mailboxes and nothing happened. At
this moment, I don't care anymore: when I need to make a commit, I know
there's people that trust me and I just ping them and they do it for me.
Should I bother people try to get commit access again? My life is very
comfortable as is... Some questions come again to my mind: Am I really
ready for the challenge? Am I going to be a good commiter? Is it fair to
continue like I am right now?
This issue and some others could be fixed with money. Simple, huh?
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.
This we can't do with grants with the NlNet flavor. We need other kind
of approach.
Sovereign Tech Fund has a very interesting model for maintainers, but
still lacks the ability to invest on people freely.
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.
We have had cases of people giving too much for the project for too
long. I don't think we acknowledge that enough, and probably we should.
We should take care of our people.
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.
On a second (and last) side note, I also discussed with some members of
the community about the status of Guile. I may send separate email for
that, but it would be great if we could use some of the energy we have
to give Guile some love. We are too Guile-dependent to just let it rot.
Thanks for all you do,
Ekaitz
next reply other threads:[~2024-10-24 22:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 32+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-10-24 22:08 Ekaitz Zarraga [this message]
2024-10-25 8:12 ` Discussion on Guix funding // future Steve George
2024-10-25 9:11 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2024-10-25 9:16 ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2024-10-25 9:37 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2024-10-25 11:05 ` indieterminacy
2024-10-25 11:22 ` Steve George
2024-10-25 11:51 ` indieterminacy
2024-10-25 12:05 ` Efraim Flashner
2024-10-26 17:16 ` Tomas Volf
2024-10-25 11:06 ` Steve George
2024-10-25 12:13 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2024-10-25 12:18 ` Efraim Flashner
2024-10-25 15:49 ` Steve George
2024-10-25 12:58 ` Thompson, David
2024-10-25 14:31 ` Christopher Howard
2024-10-26 6:57 ` Steve George
2024-10-25 19:13 ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2024-10-25 23:25 ` Attila Lendvai
2024-10-26 12:49 ` Greg Hogan
2024-10-26 13:48 ` Guix (and Guile's) promise, and how to (hopefully) get there Christine Lemmer-Webber
2024-10-26 14:49 ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2024-10-26 20:22 ` Ludovic Courtès
2024-10-27 0:38 ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2024-10-26 16:40 ` Suhail Singh
2024-10-26 22:07 ` Ludovic Courtès
2024-10-27 1:33 ` Suhail Singh
2024-10-26 22:28 ` indieterminacy
2024-10-26 21:12 ` Ludovic Courtès
2024-10-26 15:04 ` Discussion on Guix funding // future Ludovic Courtès
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2024-10-25 14:21 Noé Lopez via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.
2024-10-25 21:26 ` Greg Hogan
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