Hi Everyone

I am not much of a programmer yet. I just sit in the background watching you folks....

I sell used laboratory equipment. I am always scanning the auctions looking for liquidated equipment to buy. There are often I.T auctions too. If you wanted me to watch for a server and report back, I can, if so to whom?

With laboratory equipment the liquidated value is about 5-40% of the new equipment. A item that is $500 new might sell for 5% of that, a $40K item might sell for about $20-25% and a 100K item might retain 40% of it's. These are just rough estimates.

I don't deal in I.T equipment but I would imagine it would devalue faster then laboratory equipment. I don't know what the budget is but $800-1000 would probably buy a real kick-ass server.

Just let me know if I can help-Patrick

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

the GIMP project has a steady flow of donations coming in. Not much, but the amount has increased since the 2.4 release was made and since the gimp.org website features the "Make a Donation" button more prominently.

Until now we have spent this money mainly on the annual GIMP developers conference which has taken place at the Library Graphics Meeting in the last years. We have also spent a small amount of money on hardware (if Yosh ever collected this money at all).

I think this is good and we should continue to use the money in this spirit. We urgently have to get new hardware for ftp.gimp.org and the next LGM is coming. But I estimate that we should have some money left. So let's discuss how to use it.

I would like to propose that we use it to bring GIMP developers together in an effort to motivate people to work on the tasks that are important to bring GIMP ahead. I can imagine that it would help a lot if someone who wants to work on a larger feature gets a chance to meet with Peter and Kamila to discuss the user interaction. And to talk to Mitch to get some hands-on tips on the code that will have to be touched. Or if a handful of documenters could meet for a weekend to improve the user manual. Or if GIMP and GEGL developers could get together for a few days to get the integration going.

Conferences are often too packed to actually go into details or to work on the code. They are important, but I think it would be nice if we would also be able to fund some smaller meetings that focus on getting work done. What do you think? How could this work in practice?

Sven

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

the GIMP project has a steady flow of donations coming in. Not much, but the amount has increased since the 2.4 release was made and since the gimp.org website features the "Make a Donation" button more prominently.

Until now we have spent this money mainly on the annual GIMP developers conference which has taken place at the Library Graphics Meeting in the last years. We have also spent a small amount of money on hardware (if Yosh ever collected this money at all).

I think this is good and we should continue to use the money in this spirit. We urgently have to get new hardware for ftp.gimp.org and the next LGM is coming. But I estimate that we should have some money left. So let's discuss how to use it.

Hello

I also think the current use of the donations (for the annual GIMP developers conference and hardware) is a good use and this should not be changed.

If there are money to spare however I think we should experiment with alternate ways to use it.

For quite some time I have thought about setting up a system that would allow donors to donate money to a specific feature, e.g. donate money to implement a Polygonal Selection Tool. The money in this Polygonal Selection Tool Pool would eventually raise to rather interesting levels, and the person that provides a patch that implements this tool would be eligible to collect the money in that pool.

Now, I have not found the time to make such a system, and I doubt I ever will in the near future.

My idea here is that we could use the extra money as bounties for implementing long requested and not too complicated features, or maybe even fixing some selected bugs. There are of course millions of ways this could work, but I suggest something along the lines of:

1. A bounty is announced for doing thing X 2. A person submits a patch saying it provides thing X 3. The patch is reviewed and if it does thing X in a pleasing way, the patch is commited and the bounty is rewarded.

If many persons submits a patch, the submitter of the first patch that is good enough for commiting (maybe after some code cleanups) is rewarded with the bounty.

I have no idea how well this would work in practice, but I am pretty sure this also would be a way of stimulating getting work done.

Regards, Martin Nordholts

On Nov 22, 2007 9:58 AM, Martin Nordholts wrote:

For quite some time I have thought about setting up a system that would allow donors to donate money to a specific feature, e.g. donate money to implement a Polygonal Selection Tool. The money in this Polygonal Selection Tool Pool would eventually raise to rather interesting levels, and the person that provides a patch that implements this tool would be eligible to collect the money in that pool.

I actually have here a functional spec for Polygonal Selection Tool written in Russian by another guy. It still lacks initial review, but if GUI design team is ready to have a look at it, we can just translate and forward.

(I do know it's probably too late for 2.6)

Cheers, Alexandre

Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 07:58 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

For quite some time I have thought about setting up a system that would allow donors to donate money to a specific feature, e.g. donate money to implement a Polygonal Selection Tool. The money in this Polygonal Selection Tool Pool would eventually raise to rather interesting levels, and the person that provides a patch that implements this tool would be eligible to collect the money in that pool.

We discussed this in the past and the conclusion was that we don't want to accept money for specific features and that we consider bounties a bad idea. I am willing to pick up this discussion again but I can tell you that I haven't changed my mind on this and strongly oppose this idea.

So my take on this is a strong "no". And that's without even considering the huge administrative work and the legal problems that are involved.
Sven

On a second thought, yes it would be a bad idea to reserve money donated _not_ to specific things, for specific things.

But I still can't see why it would be a bad thing to allow donors to donate money to specific features and what legal problems that would then arise.

The administrative overhead would fall on me to the extent possible, and as long as patches are GPL and taxes etc are handled, what legal problems would there be? Maybe these problems are bigger than I currently see

- Martin Nordholts

From: Martin Nordholts

The administrative overhead would fall on me to the extent possible, and as long as patches are GPL and taxes etc are handled, what legal problems would there be? Maybe these problems are bigger than I currently see

The problems are bigger than you currently see. Here are just some of them:

1) Do you really know how to make a payment to somebody in an arbitrary foreign country without violating either the law in your country, the law in the country where the GIMP funds are held, or the law in the country of the person who receives the money?

2) What will guarantee that you keep such good records that, should you suddenly disappear from the GIMP project, other people will be able to make sure that agreements are not violated?

3) What if somebody donates for a specific feature and then is unhappy with the result?

4) What if you pay somebody for a feature and then find that the code is not usable because it violates a copyright or patent?

Etc, etc, etc.

Let me point out that there is nothing to forbid a company from paying somebody to develop a GIMP feature, so long as the company itself manages all the finances and contracting.

Best wishes,

-- Bill

______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Sent via the CNPRC Email system at primate.ucdavis.edu

Martin Nordholts wrote:

But I still can't see why it would be a bad thing to allow donors to donate money to specific features and what legal problems that would then arise.

The administrative overhead would fall on me to the extent possible, and as long as patches are GPL and taxes etc are handled, what legal problems would there be? Maybe these problems are bigger than I currently see

Many volunteer developers might be put off by the fact that the GIMP project is compensating certain contributors while others are expected to perform basically the same tasks for free. Gaining a few developers on compensated projects might very well result in an overall loss in development contributions.

On Thu, Nov 22, 2007 at 07:58:03AM +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

For quite some time I have thought about setting up a system that would allow donors to donate money to a specific feature, e.g. donate money to implement a Polygonal Selection Tool. The money in this Polygonal Selection Tool Pool would eventually raise to rather interesting levels, and the person that provides a patch that implements this tool would be eligible to collect the money in that pool.

What would happen if someone donated, for example, 5€ to get a feature that no one would ever code? Would that money sit on a pile marked "crackpot ideas" in a bank account forever?

From: Sven Neumann
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:37:31 +0100

On Thu, 2007-11-22 at 18:12 +0100, Martin Nordholts wrote:

> But I still can't see why it would be a bad thing to allow donors to > donate money to specific features and what legal problems that would > then arise.

What would be the advantage if we allowed it? I can only see disadvantages if we allow people to use their money to influence our decisions on the future of GIMP. And I also expect that it will have a negative effect on the overall motivation of developers to work on the code for free.

Another thing to keep in mind: nothing prevents individuals from establishing bounties (or hiring consultants) and other individuals from implementing the desired features and either creating their own forks or convincing the GIMP team to accept the feature after it's implemented. But I absolutely agree with Sven: for the project to accept bounties like this is likely to be very disruptive.

> The administrative overhead would fall on me to the extent > possible, and as long as patches are GPL and taxes etc are > handled, what legal problems would there be? Maybe these problems > are bigger than I currently see

I am sure there are many that you and me can't even imagine. But I don't see the point in discussing the legal and admininstrative problems unless we first come to the conclusion that we consider bounties and feature-bound donations a good idea. And so far the consensus on this list and on GIMP developer meetings has been that it isn't.

One very obvious problem is if the feature doesn't get implemented but the money somehow gets used for some other purpose, which could happen very easily if a project doesn't have really good processes for handling this kind of thing -- which would take up resources better used for advancing the project in general.