Re: Bounties

[David Kastrup]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> writes:

> Nice suggestions, Mike!
>
>> 2) Create a PayPal account for said address with one and only one
>> person, the € czar, who has access to it.  This should be someone
>> responsible and respectable.
>
> Hmm.  This actually means that PayPal is involved two times, stripping
> of 2x3% or more...
>
> What about having two persons, one for US, and one for Europe so that
> a normal bank transfer can be done?  No idea whether this is better,
> however.
>
> Can someone do a survey how other free software projects handle this?
> We could also set up a Pledgie campaign, however, this also cuts off
> 3% (or more) of the money.

97% of something is more than 100% of nothing.

I do share Graham's concerns which have been previously hashed out in
private discussions: an official money channel for LilyPond is not
something easy to set up.  In the meantime, I have actually received a
request for my bank account data from one user and one developer just
right now, so there is some support that can be rallied.  However, it
seems sort of absurd if an active and dedicated developer pays another
developer for staying active and dedicated.  So while the developer base
is certainly a place where one _does_ find dedicated LilyPond friends,
in the long run I need to shift the financial responsibility to
dedicated LilyPond friends among the end users who find that money is by
far the best resource they can contribute for keeping up their end of
the project.

So while at the moment I can "provide" one money sink that makes, in my
not at all humble opinion, a good place to turn money into LilyPond
progress, it does not mean that it is the only one (after all, I am
working only on some parts of LilyPond), nor does it mean that this will
stay so in perpetuity.  And while currently the danger of acquiring a
noticeable _buffer_ does not really seem imminent, I would want to avoid
the situation where I have money on my hand I can't spend in good
conscience.  So I would attempt of using the next LilyPond report for
fishing for _personal_ LilyPond funds, trying to present the results of
the previous discussions about official channels and see what the
responses in turns of better ideas as well as actual donations are.

Once we get in the situation where I would tell prospective _personal_
_account_ donators that I already got myself covered, or where we find
that people are willing to provide money for LilyPond developments that
someone else would be better suited to take up, we might have to rethink
about putting something up that is less personal than "currently you can
support some LilyPond developments by supporting David".

I also would find it nice if we have, say, a developer saying that he
wants to hold a talk at some conference but it would unduly strain his
personal budget to do so, to be able to connect him to users willing to
sponsor such work.  Basically have a place where software users and
money users can meet.

But at the current point I don't see that we can reasonably set up a
_fund_ where the in- and outflow of money are dealt with in separation.
While it is a strength of the abstraction "money", it requires
additional administration and legal infrastructure.  We are too small
yet for that to make much sense, I think.  I should certainly love to be
proven wrong, though.

-- 
David Kastrup