Hi all,
The Inkscape board and SFC are interested in facilitating Inkscape progress by gathering donations for funding targeted development work.
Below is a draft of a plan for how we could do this. I've run this by the lawyers a couple times now, and informally presented it to the board for comment, but before we get any further, I'd like to open it up for public scrutiny. Once feedback has been incorporated, the next step will be to have our board officially vote on it, and put it into practice.
I've tried to model this as akin to a Summer of Code, except the projects are funded by our community through official fundraisers, and the work taken on by Inkscape developers rather than students. I think this could be very important to moving our project forward in a big way.
Please take a few moments to review this plan and share with me your questions or ideas on how it could be made better.
Thank you, Bryce
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Inkscape Funded Development Model ---------------------------------
1. Fundraising =============== Using the model we'll describe below, anyone may start an official fundraiser for Inkscape development. We leave it to your imagination how to structure and run your campaign, so long as a few requirements are met.
First, the person who organizes and supervises a fundraising campaign is termed a Fundraising Coordinator. We may have multiple coordinators if we have multiple campaigns, but only one coordinator per fundraiser. They have three duties:
a) Administration of the fundraiser b) Allocate raised funds to projects c) (Optionally) Be involved in final signoff of completed projects
The first duty is left to the Fundraising Coordinator's discretion.
The second duty should be straightforward. When the fundraiser is completed, all funds must be allocated to one or more projects in the official Jobs List. No guarantee is made that any given project will be undertaken if there is insufficient developer interest, but future fundraisers can up the funds allocated to it to stimulate interest.
We expect some campaigns will wish to target one or more specific projects, and announce this upfront to stimulate donations. This is fine to do, but keep in mind that projects can change (or get implemented) while the campaign is under way. So instead of naming specific projects, it may be better to describe the types of projects the campaign is aiming to fund, and make the specific decision(s) when the fundraiser is over.
For ongoing fundraisers, the coordinator responsible for setting it up can specify the distribution programmatically (e.g. "distribute evenly to the four oldest projects in the list as of the end of the campaign", or "10% to each of the ten projects with the highest funding from past campaigns", or "allocated evenly across all documentation projects registered as of the start of this campaign". 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 third duty - signing off on completion of the project - is described in more detail below. The Fundraising Coordinator *can't* do this if they personally contribute most of the funding, because it'd run us afoul of IRS rules.
2. Proposing New Projects ========================== We maintain a listing of proposed projects. 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. (See appendix for an example set of Acceptance Criteria.) 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'.
3. Fundable Jobs List ====================== The money from these fundraisers goes to the Inkscape Foundation account administered by the Software Freedom Conservancy, who takes a small percentage of each donation. Conservancy is a US 501(c)(3) public charity, and all donations are tax deductible in the United States as allowed by law.
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. This amount is displayed on the web for developers to browse when selecting a job to do.
Anyone in the Inkscape AUTHORS file is eligible to apply for a job. The applicant must submit a Job Proposal, which will identify the applicant's qualifications for doing the job, and outline how they intend to do the implementation.
The Inkscape Board will delegate one of its members to review and vet applicants to help ensure the best candidates are selected for each job. For larger, longer, or more complicated jobs the vetting may take some time, but for moderate sized jobs the intent is for a decision to be made within a few days. The Inkscape Board may elect to mark some jobs (such as smaller ones) as Pre-Approved; once the applicant files an application they may begin the job immediately, no vetting required. No one may assign themselves more than one Pre-Approved job at a time, and the Board reserves the right to subsequently review the application and disapprove it in case of problems.
When an applicant is assigned the job, the clock starts ticking. The applicant must post at least one progress report each month (e.g. to a blog or to the Inkscape wiki). During the time limit, so long as the monthly reports are being clearly posted, no one else can apply to do the same job. If two months pass without a report, or when the 6 months time runs out, and the job is not completed, the assignee doesn't receive the funds 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.
4. Completion Criteria ======================= The Reviewer makes the decision as to whether the job has been adequately completed, using the originally specified criteria.
By default, the Fundraising Coordinator is the Reviewer; if the project was funded from multiple sources, the one that allocated the largest amount of funding (or their chosen delegate) is the Reviewer. This person must formally accept the Reviewer role by email within 1 week. For any reason, they may opt to decline the Reviewer role. If they are unresponsive or opt to decline the role, it passes to the next Fundraising Coordinator. If no Fundraising Coordinators take or delegate the role, then the Inkscape Board will delegate a Reviewer.
However the Reviewer is decided, he or she must be a different person than the original Project Proposer, and neither the Reviewer nor the Reviewer's employer may contribute more than 50% of the total funds for the given project. We want to avoid a situation where a person or their employer has an independent business interest in seeing the job completed, and is over-involved in the management of the work.
If someone other than the assigned Developer performs the work, to the satisfaction of the Reviewer, then the assigned Developer will receive 70% of the funds. The remaining 30% are returned to the Inkscape general fund.
5. Termination and Modification ================================ The original proposer of the Project or Job may withdraw it or modify its definition at any time, so long as someone is not signed up for it. If the Project is withdrawn, all funds allocated to it return to the general Inkscape fund.
Unassigned Jobs expire 24 months after their initial project proposal. This is intended to clear out deadwood projects.
Any funds allocated to that job are moved to Inkscape's general fund.
6. Process Exceptions ====================== Historically, all development work funded by the Inkscape Project required authorization by the Inkscape Board of Directors; this funding model is to establish a structure for development funding that does not require Board involvement. However, the Board retains the ability to authorize exceptions for anything outside the bounds of this policy, to be handled on a case-by-case basis, with decisions made by a majority vote.
In particular, the Board may select by vote certain projects to be immediately fundable, without needing to wait the normal 6 month period. They may also withdraw any project or job at any time, by majority vote.
The Board may also make changes to this policy via a normal majority vote.
7. Conflict Resolution ======================= If there are any problems or disagreements once a project has been assigned to a Developer, a Meeting can be called by any stakeholder (Project Proposer, Developer, Fundraising Campaigns, Reviewer, or Inkscape Board Member). For proper quorum, the Meeting must be attended by the Developer, the Project Proposer, the Reviewer, at least one Fundraising Coordinator, and one Neutral Developer (whom can be anyone in the Inkscape AUTHORS file selected by the Developer). Any unanimous decision reached in this Meeting is binding on all parties.
Any conflict that can't be resolved via a Meeting may then be escalated to the Inkscape Board of Directors, who will be the ultimate arbiter.
Conflicts of interest, including conflicts with the board, are governed by the Software Freedom Conservancy's org-wide conflict of interest policy.
Appendix: Example Delivery and Acceptance Criteria =================================================== # This is a sample set of delivery and acceptance criteria; each project # may use, alter, or replace any of these conditions as appropriate.
a. Test cases are provided to add coverage for all newly added functionality.
b. Documentation patches provided for describing all newly added functionality.
c. Updates provided for release notes, NEWS, bug reports, etc.
d. All patch(es) have landed in the official upstream repository. Either in the mainline tree, or in an officially designated branch as per upstream policy.
e. Code builds and runs on the major platforms supported by the project.
f. Code passes the upstream project's designated style/lint checking tools.
g. User-visible strings are translatable as per project policy.
h. Unit and regression test suites pass with no new test failures.
At project completion, once the above criteria is met, 90% of the payable funds are delivered. 10% is held in reserve for bug fix followup: One month after completion, a list of up to 10 identified bugs can be specified by the Reviewer to be fixed; if all 10 are fixed within a month, the remaining 10% of the funding is released to the developer. If no bugs exist, or none are specified before 6 weeks after completion, then the developer is paid the 10% directly.