[debian-knoppix] Open accounting and Open source

[Ray Ontko]

Mark,

> My point comes back to the subject of this thread... which is how
> to provide an "open accounting" system of contributd resources to
> segments of open source projects that the contributer WANTS their
> contribution to go towards. As one individuals example, I do not
> want my meagre share of whatever resources I can spare to go into
> some black hole where other people decide my contribution can go
> where they deem fit and I have no further control over the matter.
> 
> There is a simple solution to this dilema for me, don't contribute
> anything and then I don't have a problem with this "problem".
> 
> However, WHAT IF (?) there are 1000s of mostly happy Debian users
> out there with itches they could scratch but have no time or 
> inclination to directly attack the technical issues, but would
> still be prepared to "contribute something"... and more likely
> to do so if they felt, as I do, their contribution(s) went more
> directly to the areas they deem important. The typical answer of
> "be a real man and do some real work" simply doesn't cut it in
> the 21st centrury with 99.9% of potential linux desktop users.

I like the idea of being able to contribute at the package or 
group-of-packages level, but I see a few challenges:

1) I might like the idea of supporting the package maintainer,
but I might prefer to support the upstream developers instead.
Do I get to choose?

2) I might like the idea of donating to support work that I
don't have time to do, but who will see that my donations 
are being used wisely and distributed fairly?  If I give 
$1000, does that buy me 1 hour or 100 hours of development
time?  Who keeps track?  If 1000 people give $10 each, but
there's only a little work to be done, does the package 
maintainer get it all anyway?

3) When the money is distributed to a programmer, are they 
employed by Debian for tax purposes?  What if they live outside
the country?

4) There are many services for Debian performed by non-maintainers.
Do they get a piece of the pie, or would we need to create a 
mechanism for allowing contributions to groups like the security
team?

5) I might want to contribute to the debian translation teams
so that package descriptions and other important information is
available in a specific language (e.g., Slovak).  Are we willing
to provide conduits for funding to non-programming services as well 
as programming services?

I think it would be relatively easy to provide an accounting
mechanism, but I'm not sure how to make it accountable.

Ray
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