Re: [ jEdit-devel ] jedit donations

2012/6/18 Jarek Czekalski <jar...@po...>

> First I think there should be the least possible money affairs involved
> in the project, as it is likely to conflict people and draw their
> attention to things that are against the spirit of voluntarity.
>

How do you define this?
Up to now there was no conflict because of money.
I am the "treasurer", collecting and managing the donations.
If there would be expenses like for domain, server, ... I would pay them
from the donation money and if contracts need to be made e. g. some domain
or server rental, I would close that contract and up to a certain level
even bridge money shortages if donations are too low, just because I love
jEdit. That was also the reason I revived the project together with Alan
and some more.
That is how it is currently and there were no problems at all up to now.


> 1. Project's money should be public as with public money belonging to
> governments, cities, etc. I suggest google spreadsheet in which yearly
> incomes and incomes would be put.
>

I'm not sure this is really a good idea. Does really the whole world need
to know what money we have and what we do with it?
With governments, cities and so on it is something completely different.
There you are forced to pay taxes which have to be spent again for the
people that had to give the money and thus also have a right to know what
happened to the money you were forced to give.
If you like someone or something and because of that donate money to him /
it so that he can use it for whatever he / it does is in my opinion
something compeltely different. If someone wants to control what happened
to her money, she can donate the money with some usage restrictions which
would force us to use that money only for the designated purpose. Money
donated to some person or project, can be used by the receiver in any way
he wants. It can be used to by some ice, or to pay some bills, further
donated to some great other thing like FSF or EFF, or used for the project
that caused the donation to happen which is how we plan to use the money. I
don't think that this should be really made public, because then you may
also use time that could be used to bring forward jEdit, instead to justify
the decisions and deals you made like "hey, there you could have something
similar for less money" and stuff like that. In my opinion this is a topic
that should stay inside the main project members.


> 2.
> Project needs for each year should be calculated and money for the needs
> collected. It would be good to have some reserve in case we need
> dedicated hosting or whatever.
> I suggest:
> reserve_limit = 5 x (one year expenses)
> After the reserve limit is reached, donations are suspended. If after an
> expense, or due to other reasons, the reserve is less then this limit,
> donations are switched back on.
>

I don't think this is a good idea.
What would this be good for?
Just to not have a too high reserve?
Sorry, but I think that does not make too much sense.
A reserve is good, the higher the better.
If we e. g. need some lawyer because whatever, maybe some copyright
infringement accuses, it would maybe be good to have some reserve to be
able to pay this, or whatever. But to switch off donations, just because
the stack is too high does make no sense at all in my opinion.
Also as far as I remember, each project admin has to opt-in manually to
re-activate donations which is an unnecessary administration overhead.
If we really all together think at some point in time that our stack is too
high, we still have the option to donate the money further to some related
organization like FSF or EFF to support these.
But preventing people that want to donate from donating, just because the
stack is too high does not make sense for me.


> 3. In periods when the project does not accept donations (reserves are
> fulfilled), donators may donate only individually to developers
> accepting donations.
>

If I as user want to donate to a project to support that project, I want to
donate to that project and not to some indiviual developer of that project.
As user I don't know to which member of the project I want to donate the
money. If there is some special function that makes me donate, I'd first
have to find out who made the most work for that feature and maybe donate
to that project member. But I as user wouldn't put that effort in. Or maybe
I just like the whole picture and don't want to donate just to one
developer, but also not to each individually, but to the project, to
support the project. If the project then tells me "hey, we have enough
money, go away and come back when we need some more money" I'd say f*** you
project, I love you but I will never consider donating again as you are
rich enough to deny my 5 USD I was willing to spend to you. Or that user
starts a big disussion why donations are not activated and how he can
donate which again draws resources away from the real work that brings
jEdit forwards.

4. No sharing of the money between admins, devs as a reward.
>

I fully agree and always also represented this opinion when this topic came
up.
I like the project to stay driven by people that just do it because they
love jEdit and not because they get some money for it.
I really like jEdit to be driven solely by idealists and maniacs and want
to keep it like that. :-)

5. If there is excess money relatively to needs, anyone is welcome to
> suggest a way of spending the money, that would encourage gifted
> programmers to join open source projects, with the focus on our project.
>

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you want to set out bountys for work
on jEdit to make people aware of jEdit and hope they keep working on it
even if they don't get any more money for it?
I don't think things like that will work and am strictly against such thing
as it would also draw as away from being driven by idealists and maniacs
like desribed above. ;-)

In my opinion there will never be excess money, but just a reserve that is
higher or not so high and that may be used for unexpected expenses or
additional services.

Best Regards
Björn "Vampire" Kautler