Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"
- From: "Michel Bauwens" <michelsub2004 gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:14:25 +0700
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I think I understand what you are saying.
In fact, in our p2pfoundation funding drive, just started this week, we
indicate the money would be used in 3 ways, 1) one third as general support
for the content producers; 2) one third for the infrastructure of
cooperation, and 3) one third for specific proposed projects of people who
would not be able to realize this without financial support.
In our case however, the donator is not in charge of choosing where the
money goes.
I don't necessarily have an objection in principle, as long as it does not
become a commercial process or a market-driven logic, but is driven directly
by the use value.
In case of free software/Linux, it seems that the large contributors, such
as IBM, which pays 2,000+ of such programmers if I understood correctly,
does not insist on directing their work in a classic way.
Remember that if you do that, you are simply re-introducing the wage labour
logic, so then what would be the point,
For me, it is very important that governance safeguards are in place to
avoid any degeneration of p2p projects.
I notice for example, that the foundations do not give power according to
donations, but simple, one entity gets one vote, so that no single
corporation can determine the strategic direction of the project.
Also, we should remember that profit-sharing schemes do crowd out voluntary
contributions,
Michel
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 5:13 PM, CTVN <coreteam vodes.net> wrote:
Hello Michel,
I thinking I'm slightly revising my notion of the role of money in peer
production, based on the actual evidence. So bear with me as I develop
this
argument.
thx for this posting. i agree with your main conclusions. money is just a
tool and it depends on what people do with it (how many people on this list
could effectively do "good" had they money?)
imv, the question is not whether or not "money" should be a part of open
movement projects, but how to successfully introduce money and money-like
"creation facilitators" with a view to maximise investment of time,
knowledge, creativity and capital. imv this requires an (i) objective
analysis of the benefits of the investment drivers "money" and
"selbstentfaltung" and its drawbacks, followed (ii) by creative solutions
combining the benefits of the two drivers. much what vn is about.
i perhaps disagree (if i understand your posting correctly) with the lack
of influence of financial contributors and with giving them no control what
happens to the money in order to have "independent maintainers". to me it
seems that - especially in a p2p world with lots of small individual
contributors - its actually very benefitial to let them directly decide what
happens with their money because (i) the influence of the individual is so
small, and (ii) it certainly will stimulate capital investment if the
donator, member, sponsor has some control and influence what happens to
his/her money. i think the danger that the project goes in a single,
community-adverse direction because of payments, simply doesnt exist in a
p2p world because of the numerous micro-investors. whats so bad if people
can distribute their membership fee or donations on specific projects (the
list can be prepared by maintainers)?
thx Franz for pointing me to Andrius by putting your quality on his work.
cheers,
--
CoreteamVN
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8010 Graz
AUSTRIA
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