Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 03:44:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 03:44:55 -0400 Received: from dns1.arrancar.com ([209.92.187.33]:183 "EHLO core.arrancar.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 03:44:54 -0400 Subject: Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL? From: Federico Ferreres To: Alexander Viro Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.5 Date: 27 Jul 2002 04:44:23 -0300 Message-Id: <1027755867.2525.70.camel@fede> Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1895 Lines: 38 On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 03:29, Alexander Viro wrote: > Sigh... That stops working at the same point where pyramid does - when > number of recepients becomes a sufficiently large fraction of all potential > participants. It is not sustainable. I forgot to answer that one. It doesn't matter how many people want to join a project. It's up to the copyright owners to decide how much stuff they need, who to "work with", "how much folks are needed" and how is the line of comand structured. At some point, contributors will have to send free patches as they are doing now. That may or may not earn them into the "core team". Users will decide how much money to put in such projects. If not enough funds are pointed in your direction (based on how much the developer requested), you'll just have to do with less (which is better than nothing). And the asked funds will probably make sense, because if they don't there will be an incentive to branchthe project (except for the core apps as already pointed out). In the Debian scheme, people can't choose where the money goes, and there's no strict limit to the number of developers, and it's not a big enough user base (though big). As you point out, the ships sinks, as it's a classical example of the Fishermen dylema: the more you capture, the better of you are off, but you can't prevents others from doing the same. After some time there's so much fishermen that nobody capture enough to make a living from it. And that's why fGPL should allow people to choose their funded projects (except the core systems) and why lead developers should be able to manage the funds as they see fit. Federico - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/