[GRASS-PSC] Re: Donations for the GRASS project

[Hamish]

Markus:
> >>>  http://grass.osgeo.org/donation.php

Martin:
> > it would be cool to have possibility to donate money
> > for given task, see [1] for inspiration.

from the donation.php page:
"Also bug fixing may be financed - community polls will identify outstanding problems which cannot be fixed on a voluntary basis."

I think the individual 'bug bounty' approach qgis is using is a
really good one because it is very directed. We provide people
who need a certain feature fixed a way to make it happen. And it
removes any chance of vocal minorities dominating the task
selection process if the person giving the money decides.

The other side is the poison to a community trust that an overly
vague setup can cause. Debian has still not fully recovered from
their venture into this game last year. ("why should they get
paid and not me?" mentalities killed people's motivation to
volunteer their time...)

The other danger to community spirit is someone directly funding
a core devel to add some new feature, and then their being bad
feelings if that feature is only added to the core because of
money instead of quality/popular need. (as opposed to
bug-bounties) I guess the linux kernel devels deal with this
all the time. anyone follow the LKML enough to know how they
deal with it?

so +1 for directed bug-bounties, but I think anything else needs
us to take much care and pass & publish clear RFCs.


Hamish