3 ms·

I think there's money left on the table in both cases. Community funding will hopefully grow as users grow and the value grows, a reinforcing cycle, though proj

• em-bee 4y ago
  there most definitely is money left on the table, but with any community led project, one has to be very careful with how such money is used. some people take non-profit very seriously, and don't want to contribute to a project that is using funds to pay some of their developers when others work for free. that happened to debian. when they attempted to use some of their funds to hire developers some people got very upset. so taking advantage of opportunities to earn money has to be carefully considered. the funds are best used for things that the community has been unable to achieve. or at least a community consensus for how to spend the money should be there, lest anyone get the impression that someone is able to enrich themselves through the project. i can't think of a concrete example right now, but i seem to remember some projects that have literally fallen apart over issues like these. not every project is like that of course, and debian may be the extreme here. but for most projects where this is not an issue it is because this has been clear from the start, and the kind of people for whom it would be an issue self-selected to avoid contributing to these projects in the first place.
  • ece 4y ago
    That's fair, I do agree with the article, people work on what they want to work on. If happiness is $70k+hobbies, so be it.