[spambayes-dev] FW: SF.NET Project Donation System

[Mark Hammond]

[Richie]
> This is a great idea in principle, but devising a fair system for
> distributing the donations would be difficult.  Trying to
> measure people's
> contributions, when that means original code, bugfixes, patches,
> contributions to spambayes-dev, work on the web site,
> providing support to
> users, writing documentation, admin... it's more difficult
> that SpamBayes
> itself.

Agreed.  A more practical problem is that someone would need to collect this
money, and this would have tax implications, even if they tried to say they
were just "holding" it.

> (Anyway, we all know Mark deserves all of it for
> fighting Outlook
> all this time.  And in Australian dollars, 100 bucks US would
> set him up for life! 8-)

With change :)

> A couple of ideas do spring to mind, though:
>
> Anyone who's spent real money on the project, like Rob with the
> spambayes.org domain, could be reimbursed.

I agree, but not sure how this could work in practical terms with the tax
and holding issues.

> We could add developer links to the Donations page, so that if a user
> wanted to donate to a specific developer, he could.  Though
> that in itself
> raises fairness problems: who gets an entry on that page?  Do
> they get to
> write their own entry (for example, could Barry put up an entry saying
> "Bassist. Please help." - that would be grossly unfair to those of us
> without that kind of affliction.)
>
> I'd love to make money from SpamBayes (and my wife would
> *really* love it
> 8-) but I wouldn't want to leave others feeling short changed.

I think there is something here.  One approach would be that any listed
"developers" are eligible.  Our "donations" page could list the developers,
and include a link to their personal sourceforge page.  What they say about
themselves there is their issue.  Our "donations" page makes no attempt to
guide towards individuals - all developers are considered equal.  If you
gain the respect and credibility to be listed as a developer, and opt-in
with your paypal account number, then you qualify to receive donations.  The
developers make no attempt to guide people to anyone - we just point at the
donations page, and shutup.

A risk is that this will lead to lots of people trying to become developers.
We may need a semi-formal process for new members, maybe borrowing from the
Python +-1/+-0 system - all developers must vote, and one +1 is required,
and a single -0 is a veto.

To avoid conflicts (which I doubt, but worth coverting), we could adopt the
same system for the entire donations system - a single developer could
choose to veto the whole scheme (presumably as they felt it unfair).  In
that case, we drop the entire scheme, and move back to 100% going to the
PSA.

Extending this a little to handle reimbursing real costs - assuming the
person with the cost is a developer, then we *could* put a note at the top
of the 'donations' page saying 'please pay this person first, as he has real
costs to recover'.  Once these are recovered, this developer moves back to
the 'normal' list.

> [Tim]
> > Anyway, give it some thought over the holidays!  It's your
> project more than
> > mine, and has been for a long time.  I'll support whatever
> decision you
> > make.
>
> And if we're ever in the same bar at the same time, you won't
> need to buy
> any drinks.  8-)

Isn't it a shame all these fine taxation people wont let us start a
SpamBayes slush fund :)

Mark.