asterisk users - Oct 2008 - General development funding: discussion and survey

[sending to -users and -biz in a slightly different format to broaden  
participation]

Summary:
   Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements,  
bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively  
contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin  
incorporated into the price?  If so, jump to the bottom of this  
message and fill out the form on the URL provided.   There is no  
obligation to anything by filling out the form - think of this as a  
"market survey".


The Long Version:

Everyone on this list is presumably an Asterisk user, advocate, or is  
in some way benefitting from the project.  Your ideas and survey  
participation would be welcome on the topic below.

Many coders love coding for Asterisk but often can't find the time to  
do it for free when faced with things like buying food, paying  
mortgages, and keeping current with their insurance - this is totally  
understandable.  Many coders have and continue to contribute things to  
Asterisk at no cost, but these patches are typically their own  
"itches", where they have solved a particular problem of their own.   
Rarely do people pick up problems that are not related to anything  
they're doing, or pick up unrelated problems that are so large that it  
would involve 100% of their time for any significant period.  Some  
people ("Bless your heart!" as they say here in Huntsville) work on  
bugs and enhancements that don't directly benefit them at all - these  
are the most valuable contributors we have - you know who you are.    
Most of the time, though, there is a directly relevant reason why  
people work on code and often that means more obscure bugs or feature  
implementations languish, though still worthwhile if someone were to  
complete them.

On the other side of the scale there are many people or companies who  
perhaps would like to contribute to paying for various features in  
Asterisk that would be described as "large enhancements" or even minor
bugs and annoyances, but do not have sufficient funds to pay for an  
entire project themselves.  There are perhaps also many people who  
would like to help out Asterisk in a way that allows them to  
contribute funding towards the project, but they're uncomfortable  
sending money to a corporation and hoping that it gets eventually  
applied to OSS Asterisk (and I'm not only talking about Digium in this  
case.)   There are coders available for a fee (perhaps much less than  
market rate, perhaps not - we'll just say "non-zero cost") who
could
do this work and would love to do it if they could justify the time  
spent.   Open-Source Software doesn't always imply that the code is  
"unpaid work", and Digium's contributions towards Asterisk are a
case
for the benefits of having an income stream and payment system  
(salaries) that supplements OSS development.

So there is a disconnect between two groups of willing consumers and  
willing producers - how do we bridge it?  The answer some have come up  
with is "Let's create an Asterisk fund and collect money and disperse  
money to pay for work by community members!"  This is a great concept,  
but the devil is in the details, and I've found that when money is  
involved, the detail devil is much larger and angrier than usual.


The problems with this idea have continually been:

  - Escrow of capital.  It is not feasible to trust that donors will  
be good on their contribution post-release.  This may be because it  
takes a while for the code and economic situations change, it may be  
that internal paperwork processes take forever to get done (Hi, Raj,  
sorry about that delay from Tello!), or it may just be that a large  
portion of funders are flaky.  I'm willing to be convinced this isn't  
the case, but personally I certainly wouldn't code a large amount of  
hours based on the say-so of people I'd never worked with before.   
Perhaps some sort of metric could be created for more reliable payers,  
like a rating system of integrity?

- Agreement of project goals.  Who defines the project?  Who gets what  
they want?  Based on money?  Based on some arbitration?  What and who  
defines "success"?

- Corporate structure for payments.  If there is an agent in between  
the coders and the funders, then what kind of agent is that?  For- 
profit?  Not-for-profit?  Who pays for the creation of this entity?   
It's possibly the case that Digium Inc. is not the best place for this  
funding repository, though possibly that would make life a lot easier  
from an organizational standpoint.  (not sure about taxes, though.)

- How to pay?  Obviously, the more the merrier, but credit cards, bank  
accounts, PayPal, and other payment instruments are complex and  
expensive.  Payment to consultants is another problem - taxation may  
be a problem again.

- Serious interest.  This has been a topic of conversation for the  
last 6 years that I'm aware of, and none of the concepts or problems  
I'm bringing up here are new.  However, it is discussed but no action  
is taken.  Perhaps now is the time to serious look at this concept  
since Asterisk is reaching such a large audience.  Traditionally, the  
number of people or organizations that would provide "seed" funding  
for something like this is low; possibly only a single organization  
(Digium) would have the focused interest and capital to create such a  
financial/organizational entity as a non-profit or other unrelated  
instrument.  But who would use it, really?  At what level of actual  
contribution?  To convince Digium (and/or hopefully other founding  
members of some as-yet undefined organization) to put their money and  
effort towards such a fund/foundation, there would have to be  
significant interest beyond idle discussion.  The bounty concept on  
voip-info.org has been around for a while, but saw only marginal  
uptake.  I've been a part of three or four (or more) paid projects,  
but only two (the sounds-extras recordings, and the SIP session  
timers) have actually seen multiple contributors, and the rest were  
straight-up consulting.  What companies or individuals would actually  
put money into such a fund, and would it be enough to make it  
worthwhile or self-sustaining on an ongoing basis?  Those of you who  
re-package Asterisk for commercial purposes but are not active  
contributors of patches or enhancements: I'm looking at you,  
specifically.


Before these fairly large problems get discussed, I think the first  
goal in this investigation would really be to see if there is actually  
an interest in such an entity, so that last point is the problem I  
think we can try to solve here first.  To try to get some metrics on  
this that are something other than "around-the-dinner-table"  
discussions, I've put together a form to collect some data.  If you  
have an interest in putting money towards some general fund for  
Asterisk development, we're at a stage in the cycle where your input  
counts.  Please take a moment to put your data in the form below.   
Note that all replies (except for email address) are public, given the  
spirit of this whole concept being a community effort.

All of the points above are open for discussion.  Your comments on  
this thread are welcome, since this is truly a "community" concept.   
Since this topic has come up on many occasions, but rarely in a wide  
forum, this perhaps is a good time to determine if there is truly  
interest or if the methods that we have currently are sufficient.  If  
may be the case that there is no interest - that's OK.  It may be the  
case that there is interest, but there is no viable way to create such  
an entity.  (Digium, my employer, is not putting itself on the hook  
for anything in this message - I'm trying to gauge interest ONLY.)   
You're not obligating yourself to actually paying anyone by filling  
out these forms, as this is just a quick survey of how large the  
audience really is.

PLEASE keep discussion of policy, structure, and technical details  
here on the list.  Use the form below ONLY for cataloging your  
willingness to pay for Asterisk work via some idealized mechanism.    
If you're a coder, a survey about that may follow later which captures  
your willingness to work for money, but I suspect that's a pretty well- 
known truism that needs little confirmation.

Feel free to forward this note to others (your boss, your co-workers,  
other less-involved Asterisk coders) who may have an interest in this  
type of funding approach.  I figure a month would be a reasonable time  
for letting this form collect data, but that's open for discussion as  
well.


Form for your input:
  http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pmllU1ebPNlhUl_3QHUqvAg

Results:
  http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pmllU1ebPNlgCMhLQ2FaZRA


JT

---
John Todd
jtodd at digium.com        +1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director