Regarding taxes, I wouldn't worry about it.
We can channel things through my company, and the way taxes work
around here, if I get 100$ and pay 100$, I pay 0$ taxes.
That means that as the middleman, we don't have taxes to pay /
worry about.
When it comes to the individual getting the money, however, they
DO need to worry about taxation.
In Israel, as an employee, I would have rather NOT get any money
(I would have to pay an accountant to get it sorted out, which
most employees in Israel don't need to do) unless it was high
enough amount. I am assuming that some people may have similar
restrictions.
My original thinking was that several committers are already
consultants/contrators, who are already setup to do this sort of
thing.
To be perfectly frank, I don't really care if only a small
percentage of the committers get the money, if that means that we
can get people working full time on the project.
Stated otherwise, my goal is /not/ to compensate committers, my
goal is to /improve the project/. I think that enabling full time
working is the best way to do so.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Davy Brion <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
my problem with the whole thing about paying committers is
two-fold:
1) the taxes... a substantial part of the money is going to
be wasted anyway, so we might as well spend it something that
doesn't require taxes... also, depending on local laws you
might have a lot of paperwork to deal with if you make extra
income outside of your regular job.
2) spreading it amongst the committers... number of commits
or line count doesn't cut it because it doesn't take
complexity into account and time spent figuring out how
certain parts work. For me personally, that's not an issue
since a) i probably contributed less than anyone else here
and b) i really don't want anything for the little i did do
in the first place.... but i definitely wouldn't be surprised
if people (past, current and future contributors) started
catching feelings if they thought they weren't given enough
according to what _they_ think their contributions were worth
compared to what others received. Worst case scenario, some
people will feel slighted and stop contributing altogether.
It's a people thing... throw money into the mix and it all
turns to shit.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Ayende Rahien
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Taxes are relevant no matter what income source you have.
I am saying that we need to split it up into several issues:
* Infrastructure costs - As far as I can see, my company
can cover things like servers and such.
* Paying committers - seems to be more complex than I
initially thought
* Paying other people for tasks for us - tech writers,
for example.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:50 PM, Davy Brion
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
actually, tax is a very important issue here...
we all take licenses pretty seriously when it comes
to software (i'd hope), and getting money for writing
open source software should be held to the same
standard. that means that anyone who gets money for
contributing to open source should declare that money
on their taxes... in the end, depending on the
countries of the contributors, about 20 to 40% of the
donated money is just going to be wasted on taxes.
if we spend it on infrastructure, we probably
wouldn't have to waste anything on taxes... but maybe
some kind of non-profit organization would have to be
founded first, i'm not sure on that...
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Steve Strong
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Personally, I'd be inclined to agree. As soon as
we try to split the cash, it's going to get ever
so complex which was kind of the point of my
previous email - if we do want to "pay ourselves"
then we're going to have to deal with all of that
and more (don't mention tax, anyone). If we
think there's gonna be enough cash to clear our
mortgages then perhaps it's worth it, but since I
suspect it's more likely to be the occasional
beer & pizza I'd rather avoid the overhead.
Having the cash to fund other things (such as
technical writers, software licences etc.) would
be easier to manage and, providing we spend it
wisely, do no end of good to both NH and the
community.
I've dealt with various clubs and organizations
before where money was involved, so understand
the complexity that it can lead to. Having said
that, I've never done it on an OSS project, so
I'm happy to be convinced in either direction :)
On 03/02/2010 21:22, Davy Brion wrote:
personally, i don't think the money should go to
the committers... yeah, we do work on it for
free but most of us do it because we _want_ to
work on it, not because it might someday pay
some bills
i would vote for spending the money on
infrastructure... a faster jira server, a faster
svn server, things like that...
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Steve Strong
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
I think the idea is a great one,
particularly the offer to match donations -
very kind! I do have a couple of comments -
firstly, whenever money gets involved, some
people have a tendency to loose sight of
reality and start seeing $$$ signs in front
of their eyes. Given that, I would suggest
that we as a group define the rules for how
this works prior to taking donations - that
way, everyone (us and those donating)
understand where the money is going and we
don't end up in pointless arguments. I
suspect the levels of money won't be all
that high, but you never can tell and
knowing how it is to be distributed is
important. I think we need to answer
questions like:
* Who is eligible for the money? Any
committer? Only "active" committers?
What defines "active"?
* How is the money split? Do all
committers (however that's defined)
get the same amount? Is it split by
number of commits? Number of lines of
code changed?
* Who owns the bank account? Who has
visibility of it? Is it available for
public viewing?
* Do we have any other needs for money
other than just distributing it
amongst individuals? Should we keep a
pot for "NHibernate" activities, such
as perhaps sponsoring the occasional
conference? Hell, if there's enough
cash we could even have an NHibernate
stand! NHibernate T-Shirts & Mugs anyone?!
Secondly, I don't see why you shouldn't take
a share of this Ayende - you have made many
contributions to the project, and I see
NHProf as something different. Although
your *knowledge* of NH helped you write it,
there was nothing about being a committer
that made it possible. Anyone else *could*
have written NHProf without being a
committer if they'd had both the idea and
the ambition to take it forward. NHProf will
make its own money and has its own
associated costs. I don't really see the
two (your commercial activity with NHProf
and your altruistic activity with NH) are
related. If they are, then any one of us
that undertakes commercial NH consultancy or
writes or contributes to an NH book etc.
would also have to come under the same rules.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Steve
On 03/02/2010 17:23, Ayende Rahien wrote:
Guys,
I am setting up a donation campaign for
NHibernate. As part of that campaign, my
company will donate 5,000$ for the project.
Below is the text of the blog post that I
intend to post. I would like to get your
comments and any suggestions on how to make
this better.
NHibernate is the most popular Open Source
Object Relational Mapper in the .NET
framework. As an Open Source project, all
the work done on it is done for free. We
would like to be able to dedicate more time
to NHibernate, but even as a labor of love,
the amount of time that we can spend on a
free project is limited.
In order to facilitate that, we opened a
donation campaign
<http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8615> that
will allow you to donate money to the project.
Click here to lend your support to:
NHibernate and make a donation at
www.pledgie.com !
<http://www.pledgie.com/campaigns/8615>
*What is this money going to be used for?*
This money will go directly to NHibernate
committers, in order to sponsor the
development of NHibernate itself.
As one caveat of that, none of that
money is going to go to me personally.
As you are probably aware, I have my
own commercial interest in NHibernate
(NHibernate Profiler
<http://nhprof.com/>), so I don’t feel
I should benefit from the donations.
*Donation Matching*
Moreover, my company, Hibernating Rhinos
<http://hibernatingrhinos.com/>, is going
to /match any donation /to this campaign
(to a total limit of 5,000$), as a way to
give back to the NHibernate project for the
excellent software it produced.
*Why should you donate?*
If you are a user of NHibernate, you gained
a lot from build on such a solid
foundation. We ask to you to donate so that
we can make the project even better. If
your company uses NHibernate, ask it to
donate to this campaign.
