Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL?

[Federico Ferreres <fferreres@ojf.com>]

On Fri, 2002-07-26 at 18:23, Alexander Viro wrote:
> 
> 
> On 26 Jul 2002, Federico Ferreres wrote:

> What you and the rest of armchair generals do not get is that "adding
> features" is _not_ the hard part of work.  Doing that in a way that
> wouldn't be a permanent source of bugs afterwards and cleaning up the
> existing sources of bugs _IS_.  So is doing infrastructure work.  So
> is auditing code.  So is removing crap code.

Al, your point is 100% valid. That's why is said "Projects could open 
"feature requests" if they like." I think the important thing is that
developers are the ones that should run the show.

The idea here is to offer a monetary compensation for the hard work of
developers directly from the users in such a way that the costs will be
spread among millions of people.

How to pump money into projects and at the same time allow developers to
do The Right Thing, is something that can be discussed and shaped
according to each developer needs. The kernel will not want to accept
code that came from a feature requests (maintainability or security or
for whatever the reason). And that's good! Only good code should make it
in. 

An idea for funding the core developements would be to preassign a fixed
15% of all the funds at this developements (gcc, glibc, kernel, OpenSSH,
etc.)

The rest will go to userland as the members see fit, as most (home)
users think everything is about apps. We might even be able to fund
games and (uneeded but wanted) things like that, boosting Linux
adoption. We may be even able to buy some patents (like the SGI ones
that MS bought, before somebody elses limits us). Or we may be able to
open the code to certain apps to turn them into fGPL, if need be.

So in brief, the power will remain at the developers, because they are
the ones that know what they are doing. If some folks want an insecure
piece of code to make it into (for example) the kernel, they'll be so
out of luck as they are today.

The idea may be crap in many people minds. It's not perfect, it's not
without dangers. Maybe OSS doesn't have a need for those funds. But they
money is there. It just needs a way to flow from users to developers.
Right now it's flowing from the users to Microsoft. That's fine, but we
could do better, faster and bring freedom to users.

All we'll need is discussion of pro/cons and whoever likes the pros more
can fGPL. After 4 or 5 core apps fGPL, everyone will want to fGPL and
get some money to pay the expenses and hard work they are doing.

The choice is all yours ... you own this market, you control it and you
deserve to manage things as you see fit. My $20 will be waiting for a
way to contribute in an inteligent manner which also forces everyone
else to do the same.

Federico