On Sun, 2013-06-16 at 09:47 +0100, Philip Hands wrote: > The idea that it's currently impossible to fund Free Software is > nonsense. See IBM, HP, Canonical, my customers, anyone that's ever > said to a DD (or anyone else for that matter): "I'll buy you a beer if > you help me package this..."
The underlying assumption is wrong here. That only technical people, companies with technical people, or people that engage in corrupt bribery with alcohol are worthy of having their ideas and needs addressed in Free Software. It's nice to think everything is hunky-dory, but all I see is a large sea of users completely cut off from remedy and lots of developers complaining they don't have enough time because they need to take jobs either doing non-free software or not-software. Now maybe packagers don't need to be involved in handling the money, it might not fit structurally and well funded upstreams might be able to fill in any holes anyway. But to deny upstreams the access to their users because it's 'advertising' just makes me sad. Yes, Of course it's advertising! Just like sticking their package in the repository and indexing it is advertising. Debian already seeks to have a relationship with upstreams and enfeebling upstream development is not a good way to have that relationship play out. I'm happy to see more research on the psychological effects of money in software. But I will say that if there are problems and it's impossible to involve economics, they are problems with human psychology and Debian's social structure, not with money itself. Thanks for the debate. Martin Owens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1371383940.13856.25.camel@delen
