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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Le 2020-09-27 à 04:52, Karl Ove
Hufthammer a écrit :<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c713813f-749d-f84b-14de-cf8a274a0c0f@huftis.org">Nicolas
Fella skreiv 24.09.2020 11:42:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I would be cautious about creating a
system that allows targeted
<br>
donations for specific features/requests. I don't want the e.V.
to be in
<br>
a position where work is done/prioritized because it brings in
money. </blockquote>
<br>
I agree. KDE has a list of goals (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://kde.org/goals">https://kde.org/goals</a>), which
have been selected using a democratic process.</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>While this could perhaps be clarified, those are Goals with a
capital "G". KDE obviously also wants to be more performant,
lighter, more accessible, more portable, more multilingual, more
secure, more stable, etc. There is no way to make an exhaustive
list of KDE's goals (in the literal sense).<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c713813f-749d-f84b-14de-cf8a274a0c0f@huftis.org"> It
would, IMHO, be better to say that donations from companies will
be used to hire developers to work towards KDE’s goals. Then the
companies can decide if they think this a good thing or not.
<br>
<br>
There are really three possibilities – a company wants work done
that is a) aligned with KDE’s goals, b) against KDE’s goals or c)
orthogonal to KDE’s goals.<br>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>A company can also want work which is:</p>
<ol>
<li>In KDE's top priorities</li>
<li>Half as high as #1 in our priorities.</li>
<li>Half as high as #2 in our priorities.</li>
<li>Half as high as #3 in our priorities.</li>
</ol>
<p>...and the list goes on. But we don't care about such categories,
except for one thing: we don't want work against our goals. And
all it takes to avoid that is realism. Promising work against our
goals is unrealistic, since developers will not manage to
integrate work against our goals. Just like we shouldn't promise
to achieve something in exchange for insufficient funding, we
shouldn't promise to achieve something whose net value to KDE is
negative.<br>
</p>
<p>KDE consists in many different individuals with widely different
goals. We don't require developers to do work which advances KDE's
top priorities. One reason is many developers don't have the
necessary skills, but an equally important reason is that
developers are volunteers whose priorities are not KDE's, so
forcing them to work on KDE's priorities rather than theirs would
reduce their motivation.</p>
<p>It's understandable that allowing targeted donations requires
work, but ignoring that, there is no reason why we should
*intentionally* decline donators (whether these are companies,
other organizations or individuals) all freedom to choose what
they help with. Perhaps donators don't have the necessary
expertise to contribute directly, but that is no reason to force
them to contribute to our top priorities. We will get way more
donations if we allow donators to specify how their donations
should be used.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we must be aware that we will use the received
money less efficiently on average. For example, if a donator gives
10€ for a change which we estimate costs 100€, then it could be
that it takes years before we can fund a developer to use that
money. And I guess this can create fair challenges; if a donator
specified a donation should only be used for an improvement to a
specific product, and then that product is officially
abandoned/EOL-ed, do we refund the same amount to the donator?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:c713813f-749d-f84b-14de-cf8a274a0c0f@huftis.org">
<br>
[...]<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Philippe Cloutier
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.philippecloutier.com">http://www.philippecloutier.com</a></pre>
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