Re: Discussion on Guix funding // future

[Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>]

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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.

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.

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.

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Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
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