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> I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. You don't see the donut hole issue? "Sorry, but if you want to sponsor the project you need to c

> I see absolutely no issues, ethical or otherwise, with this. You don't see the donut hole issue? "Sorry, but if you want to sponsor the project you need to cover 100% of the cost. Don't worry, I'm sure the director of your department will be really receptive to the suggestion and not view you as a potential problem." It would effectively result in corporations buying a select few projects, which wouldn't end well for anyone... imagine patent portfolios but with more drama and a legal framework closer to what you'd find in Bartertown from Mad Max.

eps 5y ago
Not sure I follow. How is this a sponsor's headache? It's entirely up to the sponsored devs to allocate received funds as they prefer.
- sennight 5y ago
  "Among the new requirements on the project was this: Project must not be sponsored by a commercial company or organization (monetary or with employees paid to work on the project)" So what happens when more than one of these "developers of tools you use to be paid" demands the same? You get Mark Zuckerberg shouting "Who run Bartertown?!" at some poor project maintainer. Edit: It just occurred to me that the point of confusion might be my reference to the 90s era US welfare program, and not Master Blaster... basically the donut hole described the gulf between how much somebody on welfare got paid while not working and how much they'd need to get paid in order to cover the loss of access to the program (because having a job, among other things that help to lift one out of poverty, made you ineligible). The really bad part has more to do with the how unlikely it was for somebody in such a situation to ever be able to demand such a rate without first developing a work history and gaining experience - which guaranteed no positive change without first assuming a massive amount of risk. The same phenomenon would occur here, where taking a single dollar or accepting a pull request from an address with a corporate domain would have to be weighed against the cost of all tooling in use by a project suddenly demanding money. It would be a massive disincentive to incremental improvement, where the only rational move is to either abandon all such tooling (which, ironically, very likely depends on other open source projects in a similar situation) or turn down every offer that doesn't fully cover all potential costs.

eps 5y ago

Not sure I follow. How is this a sponsor's headache? It's entirely up to the sponsored devs to allocate received funds as they prefer.

sennight 5y ago
"Among the new requirements on the project was this: Project must not be sponsored by a commercial company or organization (monetary or with employees paid to work on the project)" So what happens when more than one of these "developers of tools you use to be paid" demands the same? You get Mark Zuckerberg shouting "Who run Bartertown?!" at some poor project maintainer. Edit: It just occurred to me that the point of confusion might be my reference to the 90s era US welfare program, and not Master Blaster... basically the donut hole described the gulf between how much somebody on welfare got paid while not working and how much they'd need to get paid in order to cover the loss of access to the program (because having a job, among other things that help to lift one out of poverty, made you ineligible). The really bad part has more to do with the how unlikely it was for somebody in such a situation to ever be able to demand such a rate without first developing a work history and gaining experience - which guaranteed no positive change without first assuming a massive amount of risk. The same phenomenon would occur here, where taking a single dollar or accepting a pull request from an address with a corporate domain would have to be weighed against the cost of all tooling in use by a project suddenly demanding money. It would be a massive disincentive to incremental improvement, where the only rational move is to either abandon all such tooling (which, ironically, very likely depends on other open source projects in a similar situation) or turn down every offer that doesn't fully cover all potential costs.