[haiku-inc] Re: Fresh funding sources
- From: Adrien Destugues <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-inc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 19:23:56 +0100
On Sat, Mar 07, 2015 at 05:35:16AM +1300, Richie Nyhus-Smith wrote:
> > While "unlimited" money would solve that, I think a better solution is
> > finding someone with enough time to run Haiku, inc., check the bank
> > account status, and make sure the results are public so everyone can see
> > how much money is available.
>
> I still think implementing a non profit management tool would help out
> here. Something like RedHen (http://redhencrm.com/), Campaignion (
> http://www.campaignion.org/) or AbleOrganizer (http://ableorganizer.org/).
> Or even a use a larger enterprise tool with a more powerful financial
> reporting and analysis system like Odoo (https://www.odoo.com) or Vtiger (
> https://www.vtiger.com).
As I said, first and foremost we need someone to actually run the inc.
Wether this involves doing things manually or trying to automate them
more, someone has to do the work.
>
> Otherwise maybe the HSA should takeover more responsibility by managing and
> rasing the funds for the contracts, whilst leting Haiku Inc deal with the
> legal/trademark side of things.
The HSA would proably use their money for contracts or other things, if
they had more donations. Currently they don't even have enough money to
fully fund BeGeistert and the coding sprint, and Haiku, Inc. funds are
transferred to HSA to help funding that event.
The HSA has some more members and a better status where there is a
yearly (I think?) vote to renew the board. This at least avoids the
"everyone left the ship" state Haiku, inc. is currently in. But they
also have an even more terse website, and not a lot of information on
the budget and the actions taken. So, similar problems there (I think
members have access to more private info, but you have to pay for
membership).
The paying membership is an interesting idea, as it allows people
donating money to have a part in the decisions taken when running the
org. This would solve the issue of people being unhappy with the org.
decisions, because they voted there, and maybe lost the vote). But then
again, it means we give the power to people with enough money to donate
to the org, and it is hard to set an appropriate membership fee. It
would be nice to have a way for all interested Haiku
users/lurkers/community members to be able to express their decisions.
And still, it must be clear that Haiku, inc. is designed to not
interfere with decisions about the development work (they are here only
to manage the bank account).
>
> > One reason for this is that the money may already be there for some of
> > these actions. Another is some actions need different funding models
> > (for example "hiring a full-time dev on a long term contract" needs
> > recurring donations througout the year, while "buy enough red bull to
> > fill the fridge" can be funded with a one-shot campaign.
>
> The former is normally part of our 'annual appeal', with the latter being a
> 'one-shot' campaign as you put it. But there could also be a hybrid appeal,
> which is still something that could work with a contract.
>
> > The problem is not raising donations (there are many ways to do that
> > with or without the various crowdfunding websites), the problem is
> > finding good ways to spend the money. If Haiku, inc. spends the money
> > wisely and communicates about that, I think the donations will follow.
> > Unless there are "big plans" for something special where raising a lot
> > of money upfront is needed, and in that case some of the crowdfunding
> > websites can be interesting.
>
> As I have sort of already stated, 'annual appeals' have the problem of
> being less tangible in the donator's mind (regardless of the actual
> reality), therefore using crowdfunding to supplement projects funded
> through the 'annual appeal' could increase the overall collected donations.
>
> This is by funding more tangible objectives and resources directly and less
> tangible objectives and resources through the 'annual appeal'.
This is one way to do it, but I think similar effects can be achieved by
having better reports on the day-to-day activity done by the org. I
think what I'm worried about here is what you propose would be a big
change to the "spirit" of Haiku, inc. Until now, it always managed to
not have any interference with the choices on Haiku development. As soon
as we try to make Haiku, inc. more active, for example by setting
specific goals and trying to raise money for those, there is a risk of
the org taking more control on the development. There are ways to avoid
this, here is what I can think of:
* Do the crowdfunding campaign outside of Haiku, inc.: if the
non-intrusive model seems non suitable or does not scale well, maybe it
is time to switch to something else, and there is no need to use Haiku,
inc. structure for that. Haiku, inc. could donate some of its funds to
the campaign. But this means setting up a different org or other way to
collect and distribute the funds.
* Make sure the goals of the specific donation runs are not interfering
with development decisions, and make only "politically correct" runs
such as "hire a dev for 1 month", "fill the fridge with free drinks",
etc. But this may lower the impact of the campaigns if they are too
generic, and it's hard to set the limit ("hire a dev to work on a web
browser" may be ok (but maybe not. do we want a browser at all?),
"hire a dev to work on the WebKit port" probably isn't as it enforces a
specific technology, "hire a dev to work on youtube support in Web+"
enforces a specific website so it's not ok, "hire a dev to improve HTML5
videos support" might be ok (or maybe we don't want HTML5 support?)
* Have the decisions on what needs to be done and what needs to be
funded be taken outside of Haiku, inc, as it works now. Developers can
submit requests, and the org just does a sanity check:
- Is it in line with the org goals ('help Haiku development, etc")?
- Are the funds available?
* Or, and once again, this would be a big change in how Haiku, inc
works, let Haiku, inc make the decisions and take part in the
development decisions. This is unacceptable at the moment because of the
opaque management of the inc and the fact that only the very small team
of board members gets to decide. We would need to review that and make
sure the decision process on which campaigns to launch is open - it can
be by opening the internal decision process, or by allowing any idea to
be opened, without any moderation, and let people vote with their money.
>
> > What happens if the goals are not met in time? Let's assume the payments
> > are not bound on meeting the goals and Haiku, inc keeps using contracts
> > similar to what they did since 2010 (fixed hourly rate). I still see a
> > few problems with this.
> >
> > When I started my contract, I had no idea what kind of problems I was
> > going to hit. It took some time to become familiar with the existing
> > code, finding the latest repository, setting it up properly so changes
> > from WebKit could be merged with it, and then merge said changes. So, it
> > would not have been easily possible to set 1 goal per month from the
> > start. It was a more general "let's see how I can make the web browsing
> > experience in Haiku better". So: who is going to set the milestone? Is
> > it the developer doing the contract, is it Haiku, inc., should there be
> > a community vote? If the developer does it, does he get paid for a first
> > goal of "find out what kind of work is needed" (as investigating this
> > can take some time)?
>
> If crowdfunding was going to assist in paying for contract work, which
> again was only an example, then it should not have such an affect on
> development as it would only be for fundraising purposes.
>
> Any failure would be the donors doing (i.e. not rasing enough money), which
> would only mean the contract would not be extended as per what currently
> happens. The only difference from the status quo would be that if the
> crowdfunding reached certain funding level then the contract would be
> extended for an extra month, if the funding level was doubled then it would
> be an extra two months etc.
There can be various other problems, for example mmlr cancelled a
contract because of health issues, 2 month after it started (the plan
was for 1 year of work IIRC). In that case Haiku, inc was able to
reallocate the money. But if it is raised on a specific goal, what
happens? Does Haiku, inc refunds everyone? Do they reallocate the money
to something else? (it happened for Haikuware in the past, the donors
could vote on what to do with the money, and in the end it was just
given to Haiku, inc).
--
Adrien.
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