Re: gEDA-user: Tomorrow! December Free Dog meeting announcement -- reminder!

[Stuart Brorson <sdb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi --

> Has the freeedaug group discussed ways for geda/gaf to accept monetary 
> contributions from those users who wish to contribute?  If no, can you add 
> this item to the meeting agenda?  If yes, what has been done to put a working 
> avenue of contribution into service?

Thanks for this thought.  A couple of points:

*  Free Dog is not the right group to handle money.  It's basically a
social group where we get together and talk about gEDA (and other
engineering software), share projects, and organize the gEDA code
sprints.  We do certainly discuss the directions gEDA/gaf is taking,
and since a few developers are there the discussions are often
translated into concrete action.  Therefore, it's a good place to *talk*
about the possibility of donations to gEDA.  However,  I don't want
Free Dog itself to *receive* any money ... although the 
idea of us getting free money while we fool around with electronics is
kinda alluring!   :-)

*  Off and on over the last few years we have discussed forming a
foundation (non-profit corporation) which could handle donations to
the gEDA project.  I like the transparency/honesty of a non-profit, as
opposed to just giving money to developers.  We have even thought
about what the money could be used for:  Advertising & promotion of
gEDA, and not extravagent parties with lots of booze and loose women
for the developers...   :-).   However, running a non-profit involves 
overhead like quarterly tax filings, appointing officers, holding
yearly board meetings, etc.  For the amount of money I anticipate we
would handle -- a few hundred dollars/year -- it hasn't seemed worth
it.

Just to give you some perspective: The Python Software Foundation --
which is a fairly major non-profit on the free-software scene -- has a
yearly budget of about $100,000 (last time I heard about it a
year ago).  That's major enough to require incorporation as a
non-profit, and can justify the legal overhead involved.  On the other
hand, $100,000 is chump change compared to the yearly budget of just
about any real business. Another question is: how big is gEDA compared
to Python?  If gEDA has a few hundred active users compared to Python's
few million, you can see that the sums involved are pretty small.
Finally, keep in mind that the PSF gets lots of donations from
corporations (like O'Reilly) who have an interest in seeing Python
flourish.  That's why they have such a (relatively) big budget.

In any event, we did agree to set up a foundation a year or two ago,
and I agreed to do most of the work.  However, I haven't been
motivated enough to do it yet.  Call me lazy.....

*  Recently, Ales set up a gEDA account on SourceForge.net.
SourceForge has the facility to allow folks to donate to the
developers via PayPal.  Therefore, we can again take up the question
of what to do about any possible donations at Free Dog tonight.

On this issue my feeling is that the small amounts
of money involved from Source Forge donations are possibly more
divisive than the sums make it 
worth.  That is, any donation system brings up the question of how to
share the pie with all the developers involved.  And if Ales were to
control the SF account, he is all of a sudden in the position of
cutting up the pie, and handing out the pieces.  If Ales is ever
perceived -- rightly or wrongly -- to allocate the pie unfairly, it
can breed resentment.

How should the pie be cut up?    For example, I may type more text
onto geda-user, but the developers in Europe contribute far more
useful code to gEDA/gaf. [1]  Should we get an even share of the
small donation pile?  I don't think so -- I think they should get more
than me.   But how much?  And do we allocate the cash by lines of code
contributed?  What about code quality?  Also, should the 
money go to gEDA/gaf developers only, or also to Icarus Verilog,
Gnucap, NGSpice, and so on?  The danger of creating resentment if
somebody feels left out is much greater than the small sums involved.

On the other hand, if we agree upfront that *no* donation money goes
to any  developer, then the money can be used for advertising (for 
example), like taking out quarter-page spreads in Circuit Cellar.
That might not be a bad idea.....

Anyway, thanks for the thought.  We can discuss it tonight.

Stuart


[1]  I'm leaving out the active PCB developers here since they have
their own donation system.


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