[Forwarding thread to the board mailing list. Dropping CC of board members since they're already on the list alias.]
We've talked about fundraisers and funded development in the past. For me the sticking point is always, "Who's going to handle running the fundraiser, and then judging whether the work was adequately done?"
So, I did a bit of brainstorming using Krzysztof's task rule as a starting point, tacking on the thoughts I mentioned earlier, and fleshing out how the fundraising and administration end of things could be done.
My goal here is to get us to a point where the board doesn't have to be intimately involved in specific jobs and fundraisers, but can just sign off on an official policy for how they should be handled in general, and then let the work happen organically.
Please read this over and throw darts. I have several questions that I'd want to see answers for before putting this up for a vote, so do please chime in with your opinions and thoughts.
Bryce
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We maintain a listing of proposed projects. Projects can be proposed by anyone in the Inkscape AUTHORS file. Anything can be proposed, including feature development, bug triaging, documentation, administration, etc. It must have a defined deliverable and acceptance criteria identified, and a time limit for how long the work should take. Initially these are all made available for volunteers to do freely. When GSoC rolls around we use them as suggested projects for students to undertake.
Any project that remains on the list unfinished for 6 months becomes eligible for funding the work. (This is so that any proposed projects that are fun or easy get done by volunteers, and money can be focused on harder unsexy work, and to make abuse harder.) We'll call these eligible projects 'jobs'.
Meanwhile, we run official fundraisers, that have the goal of getting donations for these jobs. Each of these has a named person serving as that fundraiser's coordinator who handles all administrative manners for the duration of the campaign. It is up to this coordinator's discretion how to distribute the raised money at the completion of the fundraiser, however: a) all funds must be directed only to jobs in the list, and b) no single job can receive more than 25% of the raised funds.
For ongoing fundraisers, the coordinator responsible for setting it up can specify the distribution programmatically (e.g. "distribute evenly to the four oldest jobs in the list", or "10% each to each to the ten jobs with the highest funding", or "allocated evenly across all documentation jobs". The coordinator will remain responsible for administrative duties for the length of the fundraiser; if they choose to step down, the fundraiser is terminated (but another coordinator can start up an equivalent to replace it, under their own funding distribution preferences).
The money from these fundraisers goes to the Inkscape Foundation account administered by the Software Conservancy, who takes a small percentage of each donation. All donations are tax deductable. We maintain a list of allocations-to-jobs so we can keep track of what money "belongs" to which job, so the correct amount is paid when the job is done.
Anyone in the Inkscape AUTHORS file can sign up for one of the jobs. When they assign themselves the job, the clock starts ticking. During the time limit, no one else can sign up to do the same job. When the time runs out and the job is not completed, the assignee doesn't receive the reward and can't attempt the same job again for 6 months. The job is considered completed when the identified deliverables are delivered according to the specified criteria.
Open Questions:
* Should fundraiser coordinators get remuneration of some sort, or is the ability to direct the funds they raise a sufficient reward?
* Who decides when a given job is "complete"? Do we need to have a separate reviewer role identified (analogous to GSoC mentor)? Should that person get some form of remuneration too? Should the role be interactive with the job performer, or an anonymous pass/fail?
* Should jobs 'expire' after some period of time, with any allocated funds being freed up for other jobs and/or returned to the general fund?
* How do we prune out jobs that become irrelevant?
* What if someone (or multiple someones) handles the job without signing up for it?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 11:40:18PM +0100, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
Hello all
Chiming in with a slight delay. It would be awesome if we could get that funding.
If we want to use the money to fund people working on specific features or maintenance tasks, I could help outline the goals for that, and probably also do some of the tasks myself if I have the time.
If RedHat were to provide recurring contributions, we could set up a program where performing a well defined coding task in a specified time limit is rewarded with money. The crucial difference between this and GSoC would be that we could use our program to pay people doing boring maintenance tasks such as removing deprecated functions and writing better documentation.
When it comes to rules, I would imagine something like this: Any existing committer could sign up to do one of the tasks, and the clock would start ticking. During the specified time limit, no one else can sign up to do the same task. When the time runs out and the task is not completed, the committer who signed up doesn't receive the reward and can't attempt the same task again for e.g. one year.
Regards, Krzysztof
2013/12/10 Tavmjong Bah <tavmjong@...47...>:
On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 14:38 -0500, Martin Owens wrote:
Hey Guys,
More discussion with Máirín (mo) at RedHat. See below.
On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 14:18 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Okay, and are you guys going to be paying someone to develop the features you're looking at? Are you doing it through a program or as a one-off kind of thing?
I think this is something the board should talk about. I know it entirely depends on the amount of funds and the scale of participation. But it might be worth having a couple of levels of 'we wish we could do this if we had this amount of funding'
And should it be a program? The Inkscape-Equivalence program. Donate the same amount per year as you would pay for Illustrator to help the inkscape project development.?
I like the idea of the "Inkscape-Equivalence' program. I think we should make it a permanent program. Do other groups do this?
Tav