Re: Funding GPL projects or funding the GPL?

[Daniel Mose <imcol@unicyclist.com>]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 27, 2002 at 01:06:56PM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> > Some other areas won't ever get the funding through donations,
> > simply because people will freeload whenever they can and try
> > funding development as much as they can.  We've seen that with
> > BitKeeper and you had to "tighten up" the license a bit in order
> > to make sure development stayed funded.
> 
> Yeah, and I wasn't thrilled about it, I can tell you that.  I had the 
> same starry eyed idealistic idea that things would just work out and
> they don't.  So we're essentially in a proprietary model with a funky
> dual free/pay licensing model.  That's OK for us because the money 
> people value their privacy.
> 
> Actually, that's an interesting topic.  Other applications could use
> the BK model of "free if you're out in the open" and pay otherwise.
> It's pretty effective.  However, it doesn't work very well when the
> community beats you to hell for not being GPLed.  I had a thick enough
> skin to deal with it, I doubt others would, they'd give up.  It also
> doesn't work when people refuse to obey the license because they 
> don't agree with it (we had plenty of that).
> 
> That leads to the real question: what is an acceptable model for the
> community and the vendor for applications which don't work under the
> standard GPL model?
> 
> > In short, I believe the voluntary donations aren't needed in
> > most areas people would donate to and won't make enough of an
> > impact in the areas where they are needed.
> 
> Agreed, but his thought was to make it non-voluntary.  I have my doubts
> about that working too, but there ought to be something which would work.
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Hi to u all!

It's funny how some things seem to pop in to peoples minds 
almost simultainously. I believe some people call this 
phenomenon "A collective consciousness" I've had some 
open source funding Ideas spinning in my head since the 
beginning of May. My Ideas differ from Fredricos in some 
crucial ways. But I believe that they might be connectable.
in a way that will form a nice symbiosis.

I'm willing to put considerable amount of time in trying to 
resolve, design and develop both of them together with others,
at least in part into a reasonable functionality.

This will take coordinated discussions, transcripting, more 
coordinated discussions A lot of book reading ( law practise ),
advocacy, contacting people at nearby Universities, forum creation, 
advertizing on the internet, Writing forms, making inquiries, 
contacting authorities, etc, etc, etc

It's not something that can be done just by one or two dudes.

It will probably not be achievable unless at least 50 persons 
get deeply committed around the world for starters. and 
perhaps 200 guys for additional support. 

First I want to know If more people are interested in doing
the same. I have an Email adress that is not yet in use.
, so if you send a mail to  

openpatentfunds@home.se 

with "some cool subject line"
and a body saying something like: 
======================

I'm In for now. I have some spare time
to do some tedious and boring stuff.
Let's see where this "fantasy" is heading. 

======================

I will send the result as a reply to everyone that 
showed interest in about three days from the time 
this letter got posted. It will NOT go on LKML.

Oh yes, almost forgot about the math part:
 
$1000 000 000 / 100 000 hackers = $10 000 per hacker.

I would be quite happy if I got $10 000 a year just for getting 
a little patch that I wrote in a day or two into some GPL:ed software. 
Especially if I knew that someone sent me this money just because
this dude appreciates the software that I work with specifically.

( even just a $1000 which would finance two new boxes / year )


The basis of my own idea is built in part on creating an

Open Patent Funding service organization. 

Finance is partly solved by administration of several
small charity foundations  with identical purpose, 
created by the same amount of SW-companies in order 
to avoid tax, as well as being able to use new SW-methods
freely. I've googled for this without any success.

kind regards
/Daniel Mose