Community Members Directing Funds

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

>>>> * *Community Members Cannot Direct Funds.* Community Members are free
>>>> to offer suggestions and engage in open dialogue with PLC, key
>>>> developers regarding a Project's technical direction. However, each
>>>> PLC and Conservancy must together maintain sole and final control
>>>> over that Project's technical direction and charitable
>>>> mission. Community Members who make financial donations do not
>>>> receive any additional control over a Project's technical direction
>>>> beyond what is available to other vocal, active, and contributing
>>>> community members.

>> Ian Lynagh wrote at 21:41 (EST) on Thursday:
>>> That's a bit abstract for me. Is it intended to clarify that a
>>> community member could, for example, tell a PLC "I think it would be a
>>> good idea for your project to spend money on X. Oh, and by the way, we
>>> would be willing to be hired to do it."?

> On 02/03/2012 15:35, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
>> The goal of this term is to make sure that companies or individuals who
>> want specific features added to software don't have influence over the
>> technical and artistic direction of the Project via their donations.

Ganesh Sittampalam wrote at 19:44 (EST) on Sunday:
> Does this have to be a hard-and-fast rule?

I think it's more of a spectrum.  The example I gave was "over the top"
and obviously bad.  An example of something that's obviously fine:

   A discussion starts on the email list for a project.  A PLC starts
   writing up a proposal, and separately, a company that saw the
   discussion on the mailing list writes to indicate they'd like to
   donate to the effort.  In the end, the effort is funded in part by
   those donations.

Nothing wrong at all with that scenario.

There are plenty of scenarios in between that one can imagine, some of
which are problematic and some of which aren't.  The policy is trying to
discern the problematic ones and prohibit them, while allowing the
others.  It's obviously fuzzy because the situations can be fuzzy.

> Consider a project that has a number of possible enhancements, all of
> which would be worthwhile to make if resources were available. It
> could have a funding drive where people can explicitly donate for a
> certain enhancement they particularly wanted. Would doing something
> like this necessarily be in conflict with non-profit status?

Yes, this is already done by Conservancy projects, such as PyPy, see:

  http://pypy.org/py3donate.html
  http://pypy.org/numpydonate.html

The important thing is that the work to be done isn't selected based on
donor influence.  If the PLC thinks of something, and then seek funding
for it, that's generally fine, as long as the something is within the
charitable mission of Conservancy.
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy