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Re: [ox-en] Fwd from Martin Hardie



Hi Florian,

thx for your comments.

generally, i believe money/fees is not a bad thing but rather an essential tool to achieve goals. todays problem with money is that for most its an end in itself: whether its a foundation (mozilla) or a company (microsoft) is of no relevance. the latter is at least honest about it.

"who decides on reasonable?"

the collective team beta tester (t-bt). it represents the interests which are involved in the creation of the information good/software/music/community output (physical product?!).

(a) Artists,
(b) user,
(c) VN People ("employees", organisers of concert etc.)
(d) open movement/source (basically IT) and -
(e) objective rationality.

t-bt decides on important economic decisions on basis of a price range proposed by the objective, un-biased rationality fraction.

the most important expense and cost factors (e.g. membership fees, value of vodes, remuneration of team offline members etc.) are outcome of an internal bargaining poll of all involved interest fractions.

once t-bt is completed the bt collectively decides on the bt contribution they want to make available to vodes.net. then there is a structured budget which allows for expansion. im perfectly aware that this reads like a strategic, professionall business plan. i hope it does - because vn does not stop there (earning money) as the gains are "fair" re-distributed to artists, students (vn people) and open movements (open source application vn needs/wikipedia). again, "fair" distribution of wealth is the outcome of a collective poll of t-bt.


i think equally important as the amount (and reasonableness) is how the money is spend ("influence" if you want).

perhaps even more important as the actual outcome of the poll is the setting of the (price range of) options (on what should the money be spend on?) - thats where the rationality fraction comes in. wouldnt it be nice to let rationality (and not connections, eloquency, media powers etc) have more say in any community governance? the structure and competence allocations of the idncc provide exactly for a strong (not dicating though) role of rationality. companies are rational as well; however, they lack the "heart". vn wants to be a company with a heart. imho, stock listed companies can never have a heart, but rather only a very good and intelligent pr department.

in this respect, the people-2-people direct funding scheme allows the beta tester/"owner"/shareholder (call it what you want) to vode for/ invest his/her bt contribution for the actions (s)he thinks is of most value:

http://www.vodes.net/revstartshere/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=397&Itemid=116 (working on it still).

example: say team bt agrees on a monthly bt contribution of 36 CV (3.6 euro). in order to save transaction costs, the amount is paid for six months (216 CV). on the site above, bt will have to spend the 216 CV (21.6 euro) and vode for specific actions/measures. when they "vode" the allocate funds for specific actions/measures that the BT thinks is of most value vodes.net.

"influence it"

well, the idea is not that literally everyone can influece it; rather - as in the case of any democracy - it is a representative decision making body (t-bt) who takes over the job. but my experience tells me that quite a number of people who are not interested in "influencing it". look at how many people dont go to elections.

"community"

what is the community?

registered members of the website.

of course, there are (often) diverging interests (e.g. users and artists/open source developer) within this community, but there is also a common denominator (e.g. the software application; or the achievement of the goals of the foundation). as for the former, means to solve the inherent conflict in a community are the power allocations - especially the 20% voting power on the independent, objective rationality fraction.

gee, again a page long answer...i really need to figure out how to write shorter and more precise postings...

markus



On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 12:36:54 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Florian v. Samson <fsamson unix-ag.uni-kl.de> wrote:

Hello Markus,

On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 11:59:28AM +0100, Markus wrote:

regarding willingness of a community to finance: i dont have any real
world examples but i believe the majority of people are willing to pay a
fee provided it is

*) reasonable
*) (a big part) goes directly to the people who do good work (especially
if it allows for the funding of specific actions that the person thinks is
of value)
(http://www.vodes.net/revstartshere/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=397&Itemid=116)

and the

*) use is transparent
*) fair and
*) can to a large degree be influenced by the community.

Oh, this sound quite close to the often heard explanations, why
"RAND"-Licensing ("Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory") is a good thing.
This has been discussed over and over in the field of standards and
standardisation comitees/organisations (e.g. W3C).

IMO, it is "RAND"-Terms are defintitly no good for F/OSS.

- A "reasonable"-fee for a large organisation usually is unbearably high
  for a small firm, a single person or a Free Software-Project.
  So: Who decides what is "reasonable"?
- I will not bring up the minor points agaist "RAND"-Terms here, as the
  above mentioned one is the crucial one.

Actually, Patent Law also fulfills your most of your conditions, except
for the last one "influence".
Then, I do not believe, that that "influence"-point bis too important:
The chance for everybody to get involved in the process of developing
software or a standard (= "influence it") turns out to be the chance to
rectify things which are going in the wrong direction, for ones point of
view.
IMHO, if one cannot do anything about it ("influence it") and that poses
a problem, drop it.

I discussed that peronally with many people in the field of standards:
A standard is an Open Standard, if it can be taken and implemented as Free
Software. "Taken" does not include fees, individual licensing /
contracts, etc.
As a bonus, the development process can be open to everybody
("influence").

Ah, and a classic one: What is that "community" you are talking about in
"influenced by the community"? (Try to give a good, precise definition
;-)
BTW, I do know many FOSS-Projects and their members, some even have a
"community" of adopters, I do know some people in the Microsoft Developer
"community", I know FOSS-Evangelists and -Followers, but I have not found
anything such as a FOSS-Community. And where is the Proprietory
Software Community then? Additionaly the term "FOSS-Community" is well
suited to be misused by Anti-FOSS strategists/marketeers.

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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