Buck collection

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

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Hello!

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You’ve already seen that one, haven’t you?  :-)

Hardware donations have worked fine and have allowed us to get powerful
build machines¹.  To the point the hydra.gnu.org front-end has become
the real bottleneck.

To remedy this, we’ll start a Buck Collection Program™.  Namely, we’ll
add Guix to the FSF’s Free Software Fund², which will allow the FSF to
collect financial donations on behalf of the Guix project.

The main goal once this is set up will be to get money for hardware and
possibly hosting of hydra.gnu.org.  The reason is that we cannot really
rely on hardware donations from third parties for the front-end because
we need to make sure it’s perennial and under tight control by the Guix
folks.  Also, as the project grows, I think it’s good a way to improve
our infrastructure and make it hopefully more future-proof.

Below is a summary of how the Free Software Fund works in practice.
There’ll be a “committee” to decide when and how to spend money.  I’m
thinking of having 3 people to fill that role initially: Mark H Weaver,
Ricardo Wurmus, and myself, which makes for a good geographical
distribution; new members can be designated based on a consensus among
current members.

Comments welcome!

Ludo’.

¹ http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/donate/
² http://www.fsf.org/working-together/fund

Overview of how the Free Software Fund program works:

  0. Funds will be held by the FSF. They will be disbursed to their
  designated projects either as reimbursements for specific expenses
  incurred by contributors (following usual best practices like
  providing receipts), or as outright individual contractor payments
  for development (following usual best practices such as asking for a
  description of what development was achieved as a result of the
  funds, or if funding precedes the development, having a contract in
  place specifying commitments). Expense reimbursement will be
  available for travel, meaning that funds can be used to help get you
  and your contributors to conferences to promote the project,
  organize hack sessions, etc. Another example of expenses that could
  be reimbursed would be hosting, or equipment for development.

  1. The project will designate who is authorized to receive such
  funds, and will take responsibility for letting us know about
  changes to that. One person or legal entity will be designated as
  the ultimate authority for this (likely the same person as the
  primary maintainer). The project will ideally have a simple
  governance system for deciding this -- we suggest a committee of
  three or more people and a basic process for adding and removing
  people on the committee (such as either consensus or majority vote).

  2. Donations will be made to the project via a specific form on the
  FSF web site, which can be linked to from wherever. We will also be
  developing a widget for convenient use on project web sites.
  Donations can be received natively in Euro via wire transfer, in
  Bitcoin, Litecoin, and in USD via PayPal, credit cards, wire
  transfers, checks, employer matching, etc -- all the same mechanisms
  that the FSF uses to receive donations.

  3. In the event the project dissolves or leaves the program, we will
  do our best to channel remaining donations to another project in the
  same general topic area. Failing that, they will revert to the FSF
  general fund (this will all be made clear in our public description
  of the program so that donors understand). Should a project decide
  to stop working with the FSF, the donations have to remain with the
  FSF, unless the project associates with a different 501(c)(3) -- or
  starts its own. In that case, the balance of donations can be
  transferred from the FSF to the other organization.

  4. 10% of each donation will go to the FSF to support operation of
  the program and shared GNU infrastructure. This includes covering
  transaction costs charged by our payment providers (currently
  TrustCommerce, for handling all credit cards, and PayPal). So 90% of
  the donation will be available for the project's use. We will also
  include your donors in our usual donor acknowledgment process, which
  means you don't have to worry about things like thank-you letters or
  annual tax receipts.

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