Re: Discussion on Guix funding // future

["Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu>]

Hey Ekaitz,

I'm chiming in because I've been working on FOSS full-time for the
past 2 years. Maybe it will be of some use.

On Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 6:08 PM Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech> wrote:
>
> 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.

I agree.  NLnet is wonderful, but it should be considered a
supplemental form of funding for very specific projects. Your
bootstrapping work and Juli Sims' Goblins+Shepherd work are great
examples. In the specific case of NLnet, its future is uncertain due
to the EU potentially defunding it. A sustainable project *must* seek
a diverse set of funding sources.

> 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.

Very true. The amount that NLnet pays and the structure of those
payments means it is not an option for me as I need stable full-time
employment.

> 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.

We have not found these "side grants", if you will, draining at
Spritely. Yes, there is review work, but it has been very manageable
and it's a great way to make progress on specific objectives that the
full-time staff cannot focus on themselves. We find interested
partners and pitch all sorts of things to NLnet and see what sticks.

> 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?

I'd like to use this opportunity to say that the Guix project needs to
stop relying upon email for *everything*. Whom amongst us doesn't have
an overflowing inbox where they lose track of things? The email-based
patch review workflow is particularly terrible. Newcomers by-and-large
*do not* want to figure out how to send a patch over email and the
review process is extremely clunky compared to literally any Git forge
with a pull request feature. And I dare say it's inconvenient for
experienced Guix contributors, too. It drives me bonkers. The mumi
interface to debbugs makes things better, but Guix desperately needs
to leave debbugs and Savannah behind for a forge from this millenium.

> This issue and some others could be fixed with money. Simple, huh?

Piece of cake! (Fundraising is a full-time job.)

> 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.

Is the Guix Foundation (https://foundation.guix.info/) the official
non-profit for Guix? In addition to finding grants and large donors...
is there an easy way for Guix to collect donations from individual
supporters? The Guix Foundation website says they accept wire transfer
and in-person donation at events. That's cool but there needs to be a
donate button on the Guix website that makes it very easy to donate
with a credit card.

> 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.

I heard some speculation that the number of new contributors is on the
decline? Is this true? I think this partly a funding/governance issue
and partly a tools issue, as mentioned above. It is simply *too
difficult* to submit a patch to Guix and it is *too annoying* to do
code review through email.

> 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.

The biggest questions for me are: Who makes decisions right now? Who
is handling money? What's the overlap? I know there's a desire for
collective decision making, which is great, but *right now* I think a
smaller group of core people (Ludovic + some others) needs to put a
structure in place because it feels like nothing will happen
otherwise. A little bit of benevolent dictatorish action could really
get the ball rolling here.

For example, I periodically express that Guix should break from the
GNU FSDG and create its own guidelines. Each time I do, I'm informed
that there's no structure in place to make such a decision so nothing
changes. When the project started, Ludovic made a commitment to follow
those guidelines in order to be approved as a free distro by GNU.
Times have certainly changed, to say the least, but now that the
project is bigger it can't adapt accordingly. Ludovic recently said
the next step is to get an RFC process in place. Sure... who makes the
call on that?

> 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.

Definitely best for another thread, but I'll just say: I don't think
Guile has been left to rot, but things have been moving too slowly and
Andy/Ludovic are spread too thin. The Guile 3.0.10 release happened
because Spritely paid for it in the form of Andy's contractor hours so
he'd have the time to focus on it. I have told both Andy and Ludovic
that I think Guile could use at least 1 additional maintainer that is
focused on, ahem, "developer experience". Keeping up with the patch
queue, improving documentation, ease of use, etc. I'll save further
comments for a guile-devel thread, should you make one. :)

Thanks for getting the conversation started!

- Dave