Daniel,

Just a comment on your market model

On 29/09/2019 00:23, Daniel Pocock wrote
Imagine you need a surgery.  Will you choose:

a) the doctor with the lowest number of dead patients?
b) the doctor with the lowest price?
c) the doctor who makes you feel good and always has young interns of
the opposite sex at the reception desk?

When it comes to charitable giving, many people choose (c), not (a).
Emotions win over logic.

1.  The implication that a) is always preferable to c) is misleading.  In fact a) may deliberately focus on non fatal illnesses in order to improve their score, while c) may be the most skilled surgeon on the planet.

In other words, markets depend on information and information is never complete.

2.  Regular subscriptions are convenient and allow organisations to forward plan.  To put it in the jargon of economics, they reduce transaction costs.

I would suggest that the questions to ask are:

1.  Is my current pattern of giving delivering value, i.e. are the benefits delivered greater than the costs incurred (costs, of course would include any perceived misbehaviour that you may be financing);

2.  Is there a more cost-effective pattern of giving I could adopt?

Factors to consider might include:

  • directly financing development v. financing political activity
  • the political effectiveness of the organisation / excellence of the software
  • social/political activities of the org/indv not directly relating to software freedom
  • how much time have I got to dedicate to the decision-making process?

Currently, I will go on financing FSF and FSFE, but I wait with interest to see what ideas emerge on this list.

John


In recent years, we have had new options with crowdfunding.  Yet that
also has irregularities: some projects are being over-funded and deliver
nothing.  In other cases, developers put all their energy into making
videos and Kickstarter "rewards", a tedious process that they don't
enjoy, then they fail to reach their funding target and feel that the
marketing effort was wasted time that could have simply been spent doing
what they enjoy, coding.

How do we correct these imbalances?  How do we fund both activism and
code in the right proportion?  All ideas are welcome.

Regards,

Daniel
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