[kde-community] Fundraiser money handling/redistribution - Re: KDE fundraisers and things we've learned

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Tue, 30 Dec 2014, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

>>
>> This needs to be very clear, or otherwise all discussion is useless: a KDE
>> project doing a fund raiser does not steal money from KDE e.V.
>
> Obviously it does not steal money from our bank.
>
> Again, are you saying that there's noone in the world that will think "I
> already donated to this Okular fundraiser this year so i am not going to
> donate to the general KDE fundraiser"?
>

I am saying that this is a fallacy that KDE e.V. should not base its 
policy on. You've made this point before, and it just doesn't work that 
way -- if you do fund-raising, you create your story, you do your 
publicity, your work, you get or fail to get your funding, and whether or 
not anyone else who is known to the people _you_ know are doing a fund 
raiser is irrelevant. You don't build policy on "you did a fund-raiser, 
too, so I got less money, so give me money!"

That's so extremely basic that I have no idea how to start explaining this 
in a more clear way, so here's a question:

You mentioned

"You say that fund raising is not a zero-sum game, that's right, and 
that's the reason why i said "some percentage" should be payed by the 
"specificly raised funds" and not 100%."

in your other answer to a mail of mine. That basically boils down to 
imposing a KDE e.V. tax to projects in the KDE community that raise funds 
for their project.

Is that your own idea, or does that reflect the trend of thought of the 
board?

Ultimately, the answer to that question, of whether KDE will impose a 
fund-raising tax, forbid fund-raising, keep supporting projects that do 
fund-raising or do something else I cannot think of now will determine,
will be vital. It'll mean projects will have to start do sums, 
cold-heartedly.

But, to come back to the beginning: your contention that KDE e.V is 
missing out on money because people donating to Okular aren't donating to 
KDE e.V. is bogus. It's household economics: my living-in kid is earning 
some extra money in their saturday job in a shop, so they should start 
paying rent. It's not real-world economics.

Projects that raise money for development are making KDE bigger.

Boudewijn