Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 02:29:31 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@FreeBSD.ORG> To: chuckr@glue.umd.edu (Chuck Robey) Cc: jak@cetlink.net, jkh@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Donations. Message-ID: <199803040729.CAA00653@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980303220158.438N-100000@localhost> from Chuck Robey at "Mar 3, 98 10:07:22 pm"
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Chuck Robey said: > > > > I'll donate $250 or more, but only for a vote on what work gets > > funded. > > I hope THAT never gets accepted! People have to remember that this is a > volunteer organization. *FreeBSD*, not PayBSD, and you're donating, not > buying! It'd be a great mistake to forget that. > This is my initial take on this opinion: I can sympathize with your position. I would feel guilty if a student user would contribute much more than $25 or so dollars. Likewise, a large institution might reasonably contribute $5000-$10000, or if they want more control, might hire a few people to work on FreeBSD related items. However, I really really don't think that it is a good idea to disappoint people who are counting on us (it is already hard to deal with things the way that they are now.) We need to make sure that people know that the donation is meant to help with future general progress, no-one's pockets are being lined, and the work on the project might not be greatly influenced by the donation (except in a general way that we can fund certain things that simply are not "fun" to do :-)). I would hate to think that someone might believe that they are getting much influence even with $500. If an average FreeBSD kernel developer's billing rate is between $25 and $150, the $500 doesn't fund much time. I think that one could trust that the money would be used for the good of the project, but compared to my habit of spending 2/3 of my work time, and perhaps 2/3 of my play time on FreeBSD, that isn't all that much money by itself. Since I am being paid very fairly for my work at NCI, I am definitely not willing to take payment of any kind for FreeBSD work now. However, if there is some kind of hardware that one might want to work properly on FreeBSD, I would be willing to indefinitely borrow that hardware in order to make a driver for someone, and perhaps maintain the driver as needed. The "indefinite loan" only influences me because I would have hardware to test on. If I am not motivated to work on a project, "giving" me the hardware won't influence work very much. If I want to do the work, and the only thing holding me back is hardware, then a loan of such hardware would be very productive. I suspect that other FreeBSD developers (core/non-core) would feel similarly. If I was not already overcommitted, I think that I wouldn't mind helping with the Alpha, Ultra-Sparc, or "other, non-public" machine port. There is always the possiblity of people who might be less overcommitted, who could effectively help with such a port. The problem is that "donating" a machine to do a port doesn't seem to necessarily be effective in stimulating progress. This rambling response kind-of indicates my concern that we "do this correctly" so that the people who donate are happy, and the project gets the best bang for the buck from the donated resources (i.e. we don't mistakenly squander the resources.) I think that JKH & crew has learned from previous experience, but we need to remember the past so that we minimize mistakes in the future. It is so easy to be optimistic about this, but I would think that allocation of the donated resources would be a significant (almost sacred) responsibility. -- John | Never try to teach a pig to sing, dyson@freebsd.org | it just makes you look stupid, jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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