Re: [ox-en] Re: Free Software and payment
- From: Markus <markus vodes.net>
- Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:53:32 +0100
Hi Stefan and all!
thx for your thoughts. i took some of your critisism (too complex
distribution mechanism) and added it to the VN_CRIT document.
BTW: Not every Free Software project which money involvement is
successful.
dont get me wrong: my point is not that money is the crucial thing that
makes an os application successful. i think, however, it can serve as a
very useful tool - if applied properly - to make any project more
successful. devil is also in the details. but i think the framework that
we are building up and are already implementing is a good basis to
experiment with, make (unavoidable) mistakes and learn from them
(hopefully for other interested productive social networks/os communities).
"successful in the
market place" (for me) means that its a viable competitor to closed
source
programs and that people (and not only techies) know about it and use
it.
So you basically mean successful on the end user desktop. That's quite
another story - though in the past there is definitely movement in the
right direction :-) .
as i said, i think "success" is much in the eye of the beholder. with the
recent novell-microsoft announcement, personally for me success means not
only actual success on the desktop but also where the project is about the
product and not making money (like with for-profit entities like red hat
and novell). perhaps ill get more pragmatic over time...
Don't you think that if the joomla people would see it that way you'd
know about it? On SourceForge for instance you can ask for donations
for your project. Do they?
the main problem im having with voluntary donations is that most people
dont donate even if the "should". i, myself, am not an exception.
basically all the money that i have available i use for myself or i put it
into vn. even if i truly admire and benefit from the joomla work, i do not
donate as long as im not forced too. given my limited resources, i just
see money more effectively invested that way. dont know if i should be
blamed for that or not. on the other hand, if joomla would introduce
mandatory membership fees, for instance, coupled with a transparent
mechanism (like we have) who gets the money and for what purpose, i would
gladly pay *without* any negative feelings and i full heartedly defend the
fees against anyone who complains about them.
second, you cant do any serious budget based on voluntary donations.
I think I didn't cite it but Steven Weber had a very nice example
about the role of meeting personally in Free Software projects. In
fact if you have a co-located group of developers and a few which are
only on the Internet you have a very unhealthy situation. This is too
asymmetric and personally working in a situation with co-located
developers I only can emphasize this insight. Lots of tacit knowledge
flowing during a coffee break sticks to the co-located people and
kills cooperation with the Internet community.
i agree. i dont think the whole production process should be done in a
centralised location - given the nature of many open source projects with
developers from all over the world this is not possible anyways. but i
think personal (conference) meetings once in a while are defenitely a
plus. for the team spirit, its also good to have beer together once in a
while. and this cant be done over the internet yet.
but money would give me the necessary independence to work
focussed
on the achievement of the goals.
Well, I think this is wishful thinking.
well, i can only speak for myself of course, but this is not only wishful
thinking but a fact. one cannot generalise this because my attachment to
the project is much stronger than that of all the other people that are
involved in it. but is my personal attachment to the project so different
from the attachment of a core os developer and "his/her" project? i think
for this small, yet crucial group of people the "lure of money" is not
such a threat. they want their product to work and used in the first place
- thats what gives them more satisfaction than a couple of euro on a bank
account.
Money doesn't create
independence but dependence. My employer does not pay me for being
independent of him and some vodes.net would not do either. In the
contrary: Money is paid *because* I do useful things for my employer.
i agree. money is used/spent on a task in order to achieve a certain goal
of the institution. but i dont see why there cant be an overlap between
the "selbstentfaltung" of the individual and of the institution. look what
google (as a for-profit-company) does: until recently they gave developers
some 20% of their time to work on projects they like. they seem to
somewhat reverse that strategy now, though, given the tons of services
they have. nevertheless, i kinda like this "throw out a couple of services
and see whats popular" approach. i think its very pragmatic and highly
efficient. in terms of costs to google and the actual time investment that
is done by the developers. im sure, at the end of the day, google gets
many more work hours done (for them) offsetting the 20% salary costs.
second, on vn, even if the task you are *asked* to do (via voluntary
tenders) is outside the traditional scope of individual's
selbstentfaltung, perhaps the context makes the task interesting (i fully
believe in the importance of an interst driven project). in addition,
where we can we try to explain why the task is necessary to help
achieveing the goals. the first question we always ask students here is
"what are your main interests". that also explains the variety of
different events we organise.
And if vodes.net is really different from that I'd really strive for a
job there :-) .
no, vn is not different. we dont pay for being independent. but we offer
money to people who are interested (beta tester) in achieving our goals to
do tasks that - we think - are necessary in order to achieve the (more or
less overlapping, common) goals. i assume, the more people are on board,
the more effective this mechanism is going to work. other problems will
arise... like if there are a couple of people who REALLY want to do a
specific task; but we are not there yet.
No, money is structural force and it exactly exists for creating
dependence. You would pay Free Software developers to build things
*you* want. That is you structurally force *your* will onto them.
That's not independence by any useful meaning of the word.
see above.
This all applies when the amount of money you receive regularly is
substantial - i.e. you live from it. Now you could argue that it
should not be lots of money. If it is only a symbolic amount you can
loose easily then I'd agree you are independent of that money. But if
you don't need it why asking for it at all? After all the involvement
of money makes things *really* difficult.
on vn its not a full time employment but rather freelance income. however,
the amount to be paid is considerable more than just symbolic (for
instance 200 euro plus 640 popularity based for the dumpin the bycle
animation). i dont think it reaches the degree of "serious dependence"
(perhaps a couple of hundred euros per year)
so if your main critisim against the "structured force" of money rests on
full time payment/dependence on the one end, and on "inefficiency/waste of
resources/too much beaurocracy" on the other, but vn is in the middle, i
dont see a justified critisim (in relation to vn that is). im going to add
this to the VN_CRIT paper. feel free to convince me otherwise.
For instance your vodes.net
and all its complicated procedures and instiutions are just there to
distribute money. Why when the money is really not needed?
first, the money is not symbolic and matters. so the distribution process
should be fair and transparent.
second, i think the procedures look complicated at first but i really dont
think they actually are. unfortunatly, i cant very well explain the whole
thing in an easy manner. to a large extent, i blame the "deutsche
gruendlichkeit" (dg) that i "suffer" (exaggerated) from for this failure
to explain the whole thing in a reasonable, simple, easy to grasp manner.
while dg is certainly benefitial for the creation, in my case its a
terrible thing to have when it comes to promotion/communication with
outsiders.
regardless whether the distribution process is complicated or not, the
user (Beta tester) doesnt really need to understand it, does he? i mean
when you write code the majority of users just use the binary. same here.
those who are interested in how the distribution mechanisms (algorithm?!)
works, by all means, they are invited to analyse, comment on and improve
it and make it fairer. those who are not interested and supposed to use it
(beta tester), they just use it (i.e. do a poll). in fact, seen from the
users perspective, i think the distribution mechanism is narrowed down to
the core and quite userfriendly (a few simple polls every once in a while
and the values are set for the given period). the current design is
terrible though.
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