Discussion on Guix funding // future

[Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech>]

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