[kwlug disc.] Proposal: Free Software Buying Club
Unsolicited at gto.net
unsolicited at gto.net
Wed Nov 1 20:46:20 EST 2006
What a can of worms. Excellent!
A few things go through my mind when reading these posts.
First - why would we, as a small LUG, for all the reasons Paul and Richard
point out, be doing this? Surely CLUG, EFF, SourceForge, and others, are
more appropriately sized to handle all the logistic and monetary issues
already raised. Moreover, surely all of the things Paul talks about is
already being done elsewhere?
Well. I guess not. Or Paul would likely have already found it and
made mention of it. The lack seems curiously sad.
Second - even were such an organization doing this already, would it too
already be part of the general environmental noise that we all ignore all
too often, as Paul also points out.
Well. Probably. Which seems curiously sad.
So, really, it seems that we as a LUG can (a) push for a more appropriately
facilitated organization to create a vehicle in Paul's spirit, and (b) keep
the noise level up, in whatever we do, about that vehicle and why it's worth
5 seconds of your attention.
Following in Richard's excellent comments and card suggestions, would it not
be reasonable to start charging admission to each meeting - the price being
a can of food for the food bank, or something?
The comments regarding money, and the handling thereof, and so on and so
forth that would cause a change in the flavour of the LUG, always seem to
resonate with many. Certainly they do with me. Yet the ideas that cause such
comments to surface also have apparent value. May I suggest that the two are
not mutually exclusive? Does it make any sense to create a 'sub-LUG' /
associated LUG / {something} that fully participates and contributes to the
current LUG, such that the casual observer would continue to be unable to
detect that a line exists, yet such money related issues are also
facilitated? [I have no clue as to the corporeal form of such a beastie.]
Would some form of corporate sponsorship for it make sense? And by
that I mean only in the sense that presumably such a sponsor already has
policies and procedures in place for the handling of money? (The reasons for
not handling money at the LUG are not minor - bank accounts, audits, signing
authority, continuity of authorization, and so on and so forth mean that
simple administrative tasks that must be done will consume time from what is
already a small pool.)
-----Original Message-----
From: kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org [mailto:kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org] On
Behalf Of Insurance Squared Inc.
Sent: November 1, 2006 4:31 PM
To: kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
Subject: Re: [kwlug disc.] Proposal: Free Software Buying Club
That was a long one. Nevertheless, I read *most* of it.
The recent discussion on 'how much you contribute $-wise to FOSS' put a bit
of a burr in my saddle as well. I'm well aware how much this stuff
contributes to the operation of my business. And I do remain a paid
supporter for my choice distro and the very occassional other program.
But I don't cough up much - couple of hundred a year combined likely max.
I've also had ideas on how to drum up money for oss projects. I've got a
small search engine; I've briefly considered the idea of a portion of the
currently-non-existent advertising money going to oss. Something like that.
Another thing I've considered is a system like 'ads by gooooogle' where 100%
of the revenue goes to oss - people can put these ads on their site instead
of Google's, any time someone clicks on an ad on your site, the advertiser
pays some amount and that amount gets paid into the project to be returned
to oss. (there's a real need for more advertising space online; I think
this is a great idea, but it is a larger scale project. However it has a
lot of potential).
Alternatively, and perhaps more in sync with your comments, I like the idea
of a monthly paypal contribution (you're isolated example; most people the
west do use paypal I think). And you can set up paypal now to automatically
deduct monthly or annually. I pay for one of my annual online subscriptions
this way.
What I'd think might be the easiest, is to set up a system/website that does
this:
- has a preselected but large group of open source projects one can
contribute to. Distro's, commands, tools, and so on. make sure there are
hundreds to choose from.
- allow people to put in 'one time donations' or '$XX per month' from their
paypal account (or credit card - you don't need a paypal account to pay by
credit card using paypal).
- let the donators select the percentage of their funds they want to go to
certain projects; with a default of 'spread across all using given
percentages). SO they can say '25% to apache, 25% to samba, 50% to
mandriva'. The default might be to pay anything not specifically allocated
into a 'pot' that gets paid out regularly across all projects, with higher
percentages going to more common packages (i.e. larger percentage to apache
than samba). Get enough money, and maybe even the smaller tools see $10 or
$20 per month.
Because it'd be automated,once you've got people hooked they're unlikely to
quit. for example, I sign up for $20 a month, I'm going to pay the $20
without even being asked every month. And I'm unlikely to cancel something
like that in the forseable future. Get enough people and all of a sudden
you've got a steady income coming in for these projects.
I think this idea has some serious viral potential. If done right, I know
I'd cough up some cash. Not much - but some. But there's be a lot of 'not
much but some's' out there.
Hurdles:
- marketing; somebody would have to take this by the horns and promote the
heck out of it (I could contribute to this; online promotion is part of what
I do).
- design the software and set up the website. You can't swing a dead cat
around here without hitting a ton of people capable of setting that up.
- probably have some sort of non-profit set up. I don't know anything about
that.
- have a committee to decide what projects get paid out of the funds, and
how the pot gets split percentage-wise.
Nothing too terribly difficult IMO. Paul, I'll leave it with you :).
Two other comments. First, there's no way oss contributors are doing it for
the money. It's for the love of the project/ a hobby. That leads me to two
conclusions; first it tends to be better software because it's done by
people that really care about the stuff and are paying a lot of attention to
it (that's why oss is better than paid) and secondly why that $10 you send
goes a lot further than just $10 - you're showing people you care about
their hobby and efforts. That's also why a lot of these folks say 'send $10
or a t-shirt or a postcard'. It's not the money, it's that you took 5
minutes and $10 to recognize their efforts and thank them.
Second comment, here in cash rich SW ontario, $10 means nothing to most of
us. That's not true globally. I can get a full time experienced programmer
for <$400 a month. For those folks, $10 goes a lot further.
Ultimately Paul, you're correct in that it'd be nice to have some focus on
an effort to get the overall community to contribute financially.
Individually we're nothing, but together, all of those $10 each could really
add up and help.
-glenn
Paul Nijjar wrote:
> Hoo boy. This is a long one. Here's the executive summary: I think it
> might be beneficial if KWLUG were to start a monthly contribution to
> free/open source software projects. I am not certain we should do this
> and I don't personally have the capacity to run it all by myself, so I
> am soliciting feedback and assistance.
>
> =========
>
> The recent discussion about the GFDL left me a bit uncomfortable. On
> the one hand, Rob Day found some great documentation that he wanted to
> give to his students. On the other, he was looking for ways to
> distribute that documentation without paying $7.95 to the
> documentation's author. Even if Rob had been able to find the PDF
> available for download, wouldn't it be appropriate for him to donate
> some of the money that he made from teaching those classes to the
> author of that documentation, even given that the documentation
> license does not mandate this? The students benefit from good
> documentation, Rob benefits by getting access to this documentation,
> and the original author is rewarded for his hard work in writing the
> book. As it stands, somebody put long hours into writing good
> documentation, and Rob builds his business by distributing this
> documentation for free. That's fine, but it's clear from the author's
> website that he hopes to make some money by selling these books.
>
> That's not to pick on Rob Day too much. It's not my place to tell him
> how to run his business, and in any case I suspect he singlehandedly
> does more to keep the free software documentation industry alive than
> pretty much anybody else at the LUG. (He probably keeps some bookshelf
> manufacturer in business singlehandedly as well.) Certainly, I am no
> better and probably a lot worse. Every day I log into my computer I
> see the following message:
>
> Send bugreports, fixes, enhancements, t-shirts, money, beer & pizza
> to screen at uni-erlangen.de
>
> but I haven't sent any of those things, despite the fact that ever
> since Chris Frey gave a LUG presentation on the program I have been
> indebted to the many ways it makes my life less unpleasant.
>
> There are many more examples. It's an old and tiresome question: it's
> great that you can get good karma by contributing to the public good,
> but you have to eat and pay rent too, and free software (along with
> many other kinds of volunteer or social-justice work) don't have the
> kinds of incentives that make their practitioners as wealthy in the
> money economy as they ought to be. That reduces the amount of effort
> that goes into these endeavors, and gives them a social stigma of
> being less important than "real" (i.e. paid) work.
>
> I don't have a good long-term solution to this problem, but maybe we
> can make some small difference in the short term. When it comes to
> paying for software, I have noticed the following behaviours in
> myself:
> - I am willing to pay for things before I have them, and reluctant
> to do so afterwards.
>
> - I use so much free software that the idea of paying for it creates
> a "Beggars in Spain"[0] problem: if I paid for any piece of software
> am I expected to pay for all of it? I use thousands and thousands
> of bits of software written by thousands and thousands of people!
> If I had to pay everybody I would go broke!
>
> - In order to pay for software I have to remember to pay for
> software. Going to the store to get the latest edition of Adobe
> Illustrator provides a convenient reminder to pay for the
> software: when I leave the store without paying, the nice policemen
> arrest me and put me in jail. I don't have such a reminder
> when I use apt-get.
>
> - Even the reminders I do get are inconvenient. For example,
> I often see PayPal links when I am visiting software homepages,
> but:
> * I don't use PayPal
> * My mind is focussed on other things when I visit their
> homepage (usually solving a problem)
> * When visiting the webpage I usually have not yet tried the
> software, and paying for software I haven't tried is a
> terrible idea.
> In other words, the reminders are inconvenient and come at the
> wrong time.
>
> - I am a stone-hearted freeloading cheapskate (I use Linux, after
> all) and if I gave any money at all it would be some insulting
> amount like $10. The costs of writing up a money-order and
> mailing it out would easily come out to half that cost, and I
> worry about insulting the software author by sending such a piddly
> amount.
>
> All of this amounts to empty rationalization. At the end of the day, I
> don't have to pay for the software I use, so why should I? Well,
> because if I don't then I am sending an incorrect signal about how
> much I value the software. I am not participating in making sure more
> free software gets written. That has lots of bad consequences:
>
> - Many good programmers (and documentation writers) will fall out of
> love with software ideology and go write proprietary Visual Basic
> scripts for money instead.
>
> - The more important projects will not be developed on a grassroots
> level, but rather by our New Corporate Best Friends at Sun, IBM,
> and elsewhere. It's great that Sun is funding OpenOffice
> development, but if we put all of our eggs in that basket then we
> who like free software are going to be in real trouble if the
> movement ever becomes untrendy. Sure: we can fork the code, but
> that's no good unless people are willing to develop it.
>
> - People who want to criticise free software point to us and call us
> a bunch of stone-hearted freeloading cheapskates.
>
> You know where this is going, because I gave away the punchline at the
> top of this document. I propose that KWLUG start a project that will
> collect donations for free and open source projects, and then write a
> cheque (or click a PayPal link) to give money to those projects every
> month. Why in the world might this be a good idea?
>
> - We're a LUG. Most of us understand the value of FLOSS. Some of us
> make our livings using free software. We understand that free
> software has a cost, and we can use this to educate others about
> that.
>
> - It would give those of us who feel guilty about not paying money
> for software a structured way to donate money, which solves the
> problems of reminders. Then we can sleep better at night.
>
> - If several people contribute in a month, it makes our piddly
> donations seem more impressive. One person giving $10 is kind of
> sad; three people starts to look respectable, and 15 people
> seems significant (even though $150 is still less than you would
> pay for MS Office.)
>
> - It would be a convenient way for us to highlight some projects we
> feel are useful and relevant, thus spreading the gospel of good
> free software to others. This is a way to appreciate software
> after we already have downloaded it.
>
> - It might give our recipients a psychological boost, even if the
> financial contributions are not so impressive. A thank-you e-mail
> is nice (not that I have sent many of those, either..) but
> some cold hard cash in addition to a thank-you note is even nicer.
>
> - It focuses our efforts on paying for one project at a time, which
> deals with the "Beggars in Spain" problem a bit. We may not be
> giving money to everybody who deserves it, but we're doing
> something concrete every month.
>
> - It might start a meme. If other LUGs followed our lead then
> suddenly hundreds of people might contribute money to free
> software projects each month, which might start to make an
> economic difference.
>
> - It's good publicity for the LUG, especially if the recipients of
> the funds are willing to point a link back to us and the program.
>
> - It's local and already integrated into our lives, unlike the
> "bounty websites" that seem like good ideas the first time we
> visit, but which we never bother surfing to again.
>
> - It rewards software that is already written, which is a problem
> bounty websites do not address.
>
> - It can be convenient, especially if people make yearly
> contributions to be distributed each month.
>
> - Some backwards Luddites don't use PayPal or participate in
> e-commerce, and this would give them an opportunity to give to
> free software. Pooling money might (but might not) reduce
> transaction costs of donations.
>
> Here are some reservations I have about such a proposal:
>
> - Money is icky, and I don't want it corrupting the LUG. One of the
> great strengths is we get by without taking much money from
> members. We get free webspace and mailing list hosting, free
> meeting space, and run as a loose anarchist collective[1] (sorry,
> anti-anarchists).
>
> I think this works very well, and it makes the barrier to LUG
> entry very low. If starting this program means that we need a
> Treasurer/President/Secretary and to spend hours arguing about
> vision statements and wordings on Constitutions and to have
> General Resolutions and AGMs and on and on and on, then I am
> running in the other direction as quickly as my pudgy legs can
> move.
>
> I am hoping we can keep this informal and based on trust, just
> like we do everything else at the LUG. If we can't, then this is a
> Bad Idea.
>
> - Some people have to administer the program. I am probably a bad
> candidate to do so, so we have to find a co-administrator.
>
> - As the Debian Dunc-Tank brouhaha[2] illustrates, some people have
> deep reservations about giving some people money while expecting
> other people to volunteer for free software. I certainly wouldn't
> want to cause a civil war over this issue.
>
> - The question of how to choose which software projects to
> contribute to are tricky. I have some ideas (which I explain
> below) but again it is not worth causing a civil war over.
>
> - Collecting pledged money could be a big headache for whomever gets
> to do that job. If we do this we need to structure it so that
> that job needs doing as little as possible.
>
> - Transaction costs (postage, money orders, credit card costs) might
> become a factor.
>
> - Maybe nobody will want to participate, and we will be writing
> $2 contributions or less. That would be sad.
>
> - Maybe people will feel pressure to contribute, and stop
> participating in the LUG because of this. That would be an
> incredible shame.
>
> - Maybe we should be collecting money to buy goats in South America
> instead, because there are more needy causes in the world than
> free software. (That's a hard issue but it's a slope that gets
> real slippery real fast.)
>
> - I don't have a snazzy name for the proposal. The best I can come
> up with is "Free Software Buying Club". Fortunately, there is a
> LUG full of creative people who can think of a better name
> (possibly employing some naughty implication about endowments and
> open source programmers and documenters).
>
> Here are some ideas about how this might work:
>
> - Somehow (maybe on our webpage) we have a voting mechanism where
> people nominate software projects for consideration, and then vote
> for the selected projects. Each month, we choose the project with
> the most votes to donate to. Along with the project suggestions
> people would describe the project, demonstrate a way we can
> contribute money to it, and tell us why it is cool and
> worth supporting.
>
> - People actually donate money in one of several ways:
> + They can give larger donations to be distributed over a longer
> term. For example, Chris Bruner might dig up the change in between
> the cushions of his couch and write a cheque for $14.9 million,
> which could translate into a cool $1 241 666.70 to donate every
> month for a year, regardless of the project we sponsor.
>
> + They could give a large donation, and then pick the projects
> they want to donate to on a month by month basis. For example,
> Chris might give his $14.9 million, but then decide to give
> $1.9 million one month we decide to sponsor Vim, give $30 000
> the next month for the GIMP, and then skip the following month
> because he doesn't like KDE. The disadvantage to this is that it
> requires somebody to keep track of the accounting more than with
> other options, but it could be done.
>
> + They could give one-time donations for projects they like. For
> example, Adam Glauser might give $14 the month we are
> contributing to Puppy Linux, and then $8 some other month when we
> contribute to OpenOffice.
>
> To facilitate this I would suggest that we write cheques on the
> 15th or 21st of each month. That way we could advertise the
> project of the month during our monthly meeting announcements
> while giving people time to actually make the donations.
>
> - Every time we make a contribution we record it on our website, and
> that project becomes ineligible for recontribution for some period
> of time (I'm thinking 24 months, but it could be some other
> number; maybe a year.) We would list the project, a description of
> why it is cool, and how much money we contributed. I suggest NOT
> listing the particular LUG members who donated to the project.
>
> - People can contribute money by transferring it into an account the
> LUG would open, or maybe just by giving money to the administrator,
> whom we trust enough not to abscond to Mexico with it. The
> administrator keeps a secret file which documents how much each
> software project is getting from each person, and the tabs people
> might have remaining.
>
> - We only write cheques (or PayPal donations, or whatever) for the
> money we have already received. There are no IOUs, and no
> pledges, and no goons with baseball bats and viral copies of
> Windows necessary to collect debts.
>
> - We distribute the money with no strings attached, but suggest that
> the authors acknowledge our program on their website so that other
> LUGs can steal our idea.
>
> - We make it absolutely, totally, dead-sure clear that everybody
> knows that this buying club is voluntary, and that nobody is in
> any way obligated to contribute, and that we won't look down on
> anybody who doesn't contribute -- even if he or she is as wealthy
> as Chris Bruner[3].
>
> So that is the proposal. I can't believe you read through it all. Are
> you nuts?! Now that you've gone and done it, you might as well give
> some feedback:
>
> - Do you think this is a good idea? Should we do this?
>
> - If you think we should do this, would you be willing to put your
> money where your mouth is?
>
> - What other limitations and challenges do you forsee? In what ways
> should the proposal be changed?
>
> If people think this is a good idea and somebody has the moral
> character and energy to administrate, then we could start this project
> pretty soon and see how it goes.
>
> - Paul
>
> [0] The title of a pretty famous book by Nancy Kress.
>
> [1] Fun fact! "Anarchism" comes from the root "Anarch", which is
> German for "Get Richard to do it".
>
> [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg00260.html among
> others. What a mess.
>
> [3] Oh man. I hope I am not taking this joke too far, and that Chris
> isn't in reality struggling to pay his hydro bills or something. Just
> don't show up at Chris's house to snoop in between the cushions of his
> couch, m'kay?
>
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>
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