Some Debian developers tried to get funding to finish the Etch release, but it was met with a lot of hostility:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg00260.htm...

That doesn't mean that it cannot be done. E.g. the FreeBSD Foundation pays developers for specific projects that are important to the future of FreeBSD:

https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/projects/

It can be done, but culturally the projects are too different.

There were valid reasons for the hostility. Bringing money into the equation completely changes the dynamics of an all-volunteer project, and splits the developers into the gilded minority and the plebs who slave away for free. Plenty of volunteer organisations have been torn apart by the resentment and infighting that can result.

* Which developers are eligible for funding, and which are not?

* The organisation is no longer flat; some people are effectively profiting off the backs of the majority

* The meritocracy is lost; do the "paid staff" have more of a say than the "unpaid volunteers"

* Are "paid staff" even volunteers any more?

The vast majority of Debian developers work full time on their day jobs, and contribute to Debian as a labour of love in their spare time, or as part of their work for situations where organisations sanction Debian work.

I used to work 8 hours, and then come home and regularly work 4-8 hours on Debian. Every day for nearly a decade. Totally unsustainable, and I'm no longer an active contributor. But for people who are contributing that much, for free, you can see why there would be concerns over the effect of a paid class of contributor to the organisation as a whole.

None of that is to say it can't work. FreeBSD is smaller, more tightly-focused, and has a culture of corporate contribution. Paying people to write specific features delivers results on a schedule. I donate to the FreeBSD foundation for that reason. The developer culture seems to be much more tolerant of this (though I'm not a FreeBSD insider, so don't know all the details).

FreeBSD is vastly simpler to contribute to, so I can participate with vastly less commitment. Contributing a new port or an updated port or bugfix is simply a matter of attaching a patch to a bugzilla ticket. Maybe it's not so much of an issue because there's already a clear separation of core devs vs casual contributors. And that's OK.

> The meritocracy is lost; do the "paid staff" have more of a say than the "unpaid volunteers"

Is it a meritocracy if only developers who can afford to work for free participates?

Err, yes. Yes it is.

Debian is an all-volunteer organisation. Those are the terms for participation and they apply equally to all. If you want to be paid for writing free software, then get a job with a company that does that. Debian is not a company.

> Err, yes. Yes it is.

So people who are wealthy enough to not have to worry about getting paid for their work have more merit than those who need to make rent?

This seems like a very Jane Austin-era view of meritocracy.

It's a orthogonal concern and isn't relevant to the discussion at hand. "Merit" in this context is based upon technical considerations and is unrelated to contributors' personal finances and employment status. Contributors range from highly-paid consultants, through to academics, students, etc..

Debian contributors are volunteers. They volunteer their time, personal resources such as compute hardware, bandwidth etc. Some pay out of their pocket for running mirrors, compute resources and other infrastructure. Other parts are paid for by donations and infrastructure provision by sponsors. But far from all of it.

So at a personal level, individuals must be able to support themselves sufficiently to be able to contribute. That's no different from working in any other volunteer organisation which requires a commitment of free time and other resources to participate. That's life. Nothing comes totally for free. The bottom line is that participation at a minimum requires you to donate some of your free time. You're a volunteer, not an employee. What more do you really expect here?

This is true, but I don't think it's relevant. Those who can't afford the table stakes aren't represented, and while that's a bad thing in general, it doesn't cause the specific internal resentment within the project that the earlier post was talking about. I think "meritocracy" in this case was used to refer to the internal social dynamics of this system, not the generalised ones that apply across the whole population.

In other words, I think this reply shifts the context from "will paying volunteers harm the project?" to "is paying volunteers morally right because it enables wider participation?"

Do you think a bounty system would work? Leadership decides payouts for different contributions. Possibly exclude leadership from bounty access so that the core ethos is still volunteer driven. Everyone else has access to bounties so there’s no resentment. Contributions could range from code patches to release management & announcements.

I'd like to say yes, but I really don't think that would work. It changes an organisation where everyone contributes for free to one where a subset of the developers are all chasing after bounties. "Equal access" doesn't mean no resentment. There's going to be competition due to the limited funding, and there will be losers. There will be questions and recrimination over how fair the selection process is (whether true or not). But getting the bounty also means a commitment to providing some deliverables within a defined period, compared to the commitment being imposed primarily due to one's dedication to the project.

Overall, I can see it working for some organisations. But I don't see Debian as one of them.

The Monero cryptocurrency's developers are all funded via the community via bounties. I think it works really well.

https://ccs.getmonero.org/ (new system) https://forum.getmonero.org/22/completed-tasks (old system)

Instead of paying volunteers would contracting critical tasks to an FOSS friendly software consulting firm be less controversial for Debian (although that might not be an option due to expense)?

Just curious

It's an interesting question. Like bounties, I think it would not work, for similar reasons.

Work you contract out is effectively saying: none of you volunteers are up to the task. We'll have to get someone better than you to do it. That's not great for the psyche of the project.

And this has already happened from a certain perspective. (I'm biased here, for the record.) Look at the systemd debate and fallout. At its core, this was effectively contracting out the maintenance of the whole base system to a third party organisation, and telling the Debian developers that they weren't allowed to touch it in all but the most superficial way. This isn't about the technical merits of the decision, by the way. It's about how the organisation went from being an independent technical leader with development driven by its own people, who were highly regarded in their own right, to being a follower being told what to do by others. It took away the primary driver of Debian's independent existence and the agency of its developers to drive change at that level. (It was a minor contributing factor behind my leaving the project.)

And like bounties, there are concerns over who gets the money. Is it subject to favouritism, influence, or other factors.

As I said in the original post, I think it could (and does) work for other organisations. What makes Debian unique is that its origins were a 100% volunteer-driven self-sufficient effort, and that essentially defines the project's culture to this day. Every bit of internal infrastructure and tooling was originally self-developed. I used to maintain some of it myself. Other organisations would have no political issues with paying a contractor to "get x done". But being a volunteer effort, actually "doing x" is as important to the volunteers as the end goal.