I think it would be a grand thing if someone put together a visible list
of critical Internet infrastructure, who maintains it, and perhaps
"click to support" buttons for those that need support. Then again,
such a list might present a wonderful target list for those who might
want to do ill.
This also might be a great role for the Internet Systems Consortium.
You know, the folks who maintain Bind, and already maintain a list of
critical software maintained by ISC and others, along with a list of
supporters, and a way to support some of the efforts.
Miles Fidelman
On 6/27/19 12:49 PM, Matt Harris wrote:
On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:32 AM Tom Beecher <beec...@beecher.cc> wrote:
Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals
directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to,
say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides
(likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the
sort of folks you're talking about.
Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for
existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a
lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of
people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for
taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
I don't think anyone needs to be compensated for that. I think that
you can certainly run a volunteer organization. The time required
would be minimal enough that normally-employed folks could participate
without issue in managing it. Having that tax deductible status, in
the US at least, would be a big benefit and would also bring in
institutional/corporate donors and the like as well. Non-profits have
been run for making infrastructure software before and have been at
least somewhat successful. ISC is an example of this. Something a bit
more decentralized could work just fine, too, imho.
As far as just asking people to give to others at random, I think
you'll see less uptake and potentially issues with parity (for
example, if you add worthy folks to a list, those at the top of the
list will likely benefit more from random contributors just because
they select those at the top of the list - so how do you decide who
gets to be where on such a list?), and little if any interest from
institutional/corporate donors. A formal organization structure with
rules written down in public also helps to ensure transparency and if
you set objective, meritocratic rules for the disbursement of funds
and you keep things transparent around them, I think that would
attract a lot of contributions.
Just my opinions, though.
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
