Hello everyone,
I ran into argument with my father about who pays Debian developement. He says everyone want to eat something and since only donation won't cut it, corporations and companies which use Debian need to fund the developement. I understand that some task
like kernel maintanace are full-time job and someone needs to pay those people, but I always thaught that since Debian is community software project, most of the work comes from volunteers and enthusiasts. So my qustion is - how does it actually work?
Thank you for your answers.

Best regards,
KS

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Hi,

krystof@ibse.cz wrote on 31/01/2023 at 10:51:10+0100:

Hello everyone,
I ran into argument with my father about who pays Debian
developement. He says everyone want to eat something and since only
donation won't cut it, corporations and companies which use Debian
need to fund the developement. I understand that some task like kernel maintanace are full-time job and someone needs to pay those people,
but I always thaught that since Debian is community software project,
most of the work comes from volunteers and enthusiasts. So my qustion
is - how does it actually work? Thank you for your answers.

Best regards,

Debian is a volunteer-run project and therefore, the standard situation
is that people who build and maintain the Debian Ecosystem are doing it
for free. True, some people are allowed by their employeer to do it on
their work time, which could be seen as a sponsorship of the project,
and there's even some who are paid specifically by their employeer to
package some stuff in Debian, but this is not the majority of the
Contributors.

So, on the specific aspect of the development, I guess we can agree that
it's, indeed, *NOT* funded by any corporation.

That being said, many companies are making donations to the project (or,
to be specific, to its Trusted Organizations - SPI/Debian
France/Debian.ch), as a sponsorship, and to help the project covering
its hosting costs (we need servers, hosting places, etc, to provide our websites and our packages/installers/...).

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project. At best it can be used to reimburse some
specific expenses the Developer would make to contribute to the project
(a flight ticket to go to a BSP, some specific hardware, ...).

I hope this makes things clearer.
--
PEB
Treasurer of Debian France and Debian Developer on his free time.

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On 1/31/23 05:43, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

Hi,

krystof@ibse.cz wrote on 31/01/2023 at 10:51:10+0100:

Hello everyone,
I ran into argument with my father about who pays Debian
developement. He says everyone want to eat something and since only
donation won't cut it, corporations and companies which use Debian
need to fund the developement. I understand that some task like kernel
maintanace are full-time job and someone needs to pay those people,
but I always thaught that since Debian is community software project,
most of the work comes from volunteers and enthusiasts. So my qustion
is - how does it actually work? Thank you for your answers.

Best regards,

Debian is a volunteer-run project and therefore, the standard situation
is that people who build and maintain the Debian Ecosystem are doing it
for free. True, some people are allowed by their employeer to do it on
their work time, which could be seen as a sponsorship of the project,
and there's even some who are paid specifically by their employeer to
package some stuff in Debian, but this is not the majority of the Contributors.

So, on the specific aspect of the development, I guess we can agree that it's, indeed, *NOT* funded by any corporation.

That being said, many companies are making donations to the project (or,
to be specific, to its Trusted Organizations - SPI/Debian
France/Debian.ch), as a sponsorship, and to help the project covering
its hosting costs (we need servers, hosting places, etc, to provide our websites and our packages/installers/...).

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project. At best it can be used to reimburse some
specific expenses the Developer would make to contribute to the project
(a flight ticket to go to a BSP, some specific hardware, ...).

I hope this makes things clearer.

It does, but we should all remember that TANSTAAFL is a universal law.
It cannot be broken.

So something like this needs to be said:

Make it easier for John Q. Public's like me to contribute to those
support funds. I'm not Elon Musk, but I could manage a $50 bill from
time to time. Make it easier for the users who have benefited greatly,
to supply some of those expenses, please.

We are also very aware that info on the suppliers of such funds is a
valuable commodity to the hacker. There are quite a number of American
based charities I do not contribute to simply because they insist on
ones social security number. That ain't gonna happen. Make it the equ of
me handing you a $50 bill, untraceable cash, no strings attached. It's
my thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>

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gene heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> wrote on 31/01/2023 at 14:00:14+0100:

On 1/31/23 05:43, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

Hi,
krystof@ibse.cz wrote on 31/01/2023 at 10:51:10+0100:

Hello everyone,
I ran into argument with my father about who pays Debian
developement. He says everyone want to eat something and since only
donation won't cut it, corporations and companies which use Debian
need to fund the developement. I understand that some task like kernel
maintanace are full-time job and someone needs to pay those people,
but I always thaught that since Debian is community software project,
most of the work comes from volunteers and enthusiasts. So my qustion
is - how does it actually work? Thank you for your answers.

Best regards,

Debian is a volunteer-run project and therefore, the standard
situation
is that people who build and maintain the Debian Ecosystem are doing it
for free. True, some people are allowed by their employeer to do it on
their work time, which could be seen as a sponsorship of the project,
and there's even some who are paid specifically by their employeer to
package some stuff in Debian, but this is not the majority of the
Contributors.
So, on the specific aspect of the development, I guess we can agree
that
it's, indeed, *NOT* funded by any corporation.
That being said, many companies are making donations to the project
(or,
to be specific, to its Trusted Organizations - SPI/Debian
France/Debian.ch), as a sponsorship, and to help the project covering
its hosting costs (we need servers, hosting places, etc, to provide our
websites and our packages/installers/...).
There are also individuals making such donations.
That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer
for
its work in the project. At best it can be used to reimburse some
specific expenses the Developer would make to contribute to the project
(a flight ticket to go to a BSP, some specific hardware, ...).
I hope this makes things clearer.

It does, but we should all remember that TANSTAAFL is a universal
law. It cannot be broken.

So something like this needs to be said:

Make it easier for John Q. Public's like me to contribute to those
support funds. I'm not Elon Musk, but I could manage a $50 bill from
time to time. Make it easier for the users who have benefited
greatly, to supply some of those expenses, please.

We are also very aware that info on the suppliers of such funds is a
valuable commodity to the hacker. There are quite a number of American
based charities I do not contribute to simply because they insist on
ones social security number. That ain't gonna happen. Make it the equ
of me handing you a $50 bill, untraceable cash, no strings
attached. It's my thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.

That's nice to read,thanks. We actually take bills from people attending
the events where Debian's booth is. In Europe, generally the bill ends
up in Debian France's (the Euro Zone Trusted Organization for Debian)
account and is credited to Debian's budget.

The swag we sell (tshirts, hoodies, others) is bought and sold by Debian France, so the money goes in Debian France's own budget. Generally as
soon as our own budget exceeds €40.000, we give €20.000 to Debian by
moving the amount on Debian's budget.

As a US resident, if you don't go to FOSS events in Europe, you should
have a look at the events that occur in the US & Canada and see if a
Debian booth is there, if so there's a great chance they'd accept your
bill.

Also, you can do a wire transfer, no strings attached, we ask nothing
for donations we receive via bank transfer. We have a name, but we make
no use of it outside of our ledger, which is not public and won't be
(French law, yadda yadda).

Cheers!
--
PEB

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gene heskett wrote:
...

So something like this needs to be said:

Make it easier for John Q. Public's like me to contribute to those
support funds. I'm not Elon Musk, but I could manage a $50 bill from
time to time. Make it easier for the users who have benefited greatly,
to supply some of those expenses, please.

We are also very aware that info on the suppliers of such funds is a
valuable commodity to the hacker. There are quite a number of American
based charities I do not contribute to simply because they insist on
ones social security number. That ain't gonna happen. Make it the equ of
me handing you a $50 bill, untraceable cash, no strings attached. It's
my thank you.

https://www.spi-inc.org/donations/

they will take checks or money orders, no cash, that's silly
but i guess it would be hard to keep track of anyone handling
the mail not lifting funds if people sent cash.

another approach would be to ask if there are any people
you know who will send the money order or check for you.
sure it's an extra step and a bit of an impediment that is
not a reason not to contribute.

in the past the other way i normally would send an amount
to Debian was through the websites that would offer disks
for sale and they often had an additional entry for an
extra amount to go to Debian.

and for those in the techie field or work for larger
corporations you could ask your company to make the donation
and then give the corporation the extra funds to go along
with whatever they're willing to send.

some local chapters may take paypal or cash and be
willing to pass it along.


songbird (more than one way to get it done

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Hi,

how does it actually work?

Most of the software in the Debian operating system is taken by Debian
for free from "upstream" projects.

For example i maintain as upstream developer libburn, lisofs, and
libisoburn with their applications cdrskin and xorriso. They are not
specific to Debian or to GNU/Linux.
I support Debian especially by preparing the Debian packages of my
upstream projects. Those get signed and uploaded by Dominique Dumont
who holds a Debian rank, unlike me. See what Debian makes out of my
upstream package libisoburn:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libisoburn

I don't get paid for this. It's for fun, curiosity, and conscience.
An easy way to pay back to the world for what i take from it for free.
During the years i got some donations for hardware costs. But that's not
a significant motivation for me.

Aside from getting upstream's work for free, it is quite some work to
prepare all the Debian packages and to coordinate their dependencies (the further software which a package needs to work). That's why several other GNU/Linux distros take the bulk of their packages from Debian for free.

So everybody is taking advantage of everybody. Those who don't maintain software can contribute by submitting bug reports or other feedback.


Of course, one has to be able to afford giving away ones work.

I still work in the proprietary IT industry. The customers see no
problem with paying my employer and to charge their customers.
A completely different social model.
Free software development in large parts swims on top of that model.
It is quite astounding that this coexistence works since decades.
Obviously it benefits both sides.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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"Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote on 31/01/2023 at 15:01:15+0100:

I don't get paid for this. It's for fun, curiosity, and conscience.

I'd add "and because I rely on it", from my point of view.

All my systems run Debian, having a nice OS is the guarantee that my
systems will keep working a way I like them to be.
--
PEB

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On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 05:34:49 AM Pierre-Elliott B�cue wrote:

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project.

Well that may be true in the case of certain Debian organizations, but I doubt there is any "universal" rule that would keep me from making a donation to some Debian organization specifically for the purpose of paying a developer for
developing (or maintaining), for example, some specific package / software.

At best it can be used to reimburse some
specific expenses the Developer would make to contribute to the project
(a flight ticket to go to a BSP, some specific hardware, ...).

--
rhk

(sig revised 20221206)

If you reply: snip, snip, and snip again; leave attributions; avoid HTML; avoid top posting; and keep it "on list". (Oxford comma (and semi-colon) included at no charge.) If you revise the topic, change the Subject: line. If you change the topic, start a new thread.

Writing is often meant for others to read and understand (legal documents excepted?) -- make it easier for your reader by various means, including liberal use of whitespace (short paragraphs, separated by whitespace / blank lines) and minimal use of (obscure?) jargon, abbreviations, acronyms, and references.

If someone has already responded to a question, decide whether any response you add will be helpful or not ...

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video (or "audio"): not so much -- divide by 10 for each minute of video (or audio) or create a transcript and edit it to 10% of the original.

A speaker who uses ahhs, ums, or such may have a real physical or mental
disa

On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 08:00:14 AM gene heskett wrote:

It does, but we should all remember that TANSTAAFL is a universal law.
It cannot be broken.

Aside: Not the purpose of my response here, so plaese do not reply, but I believe that I am supplying some free lunches. If not, I'll have to think about and figure out in what way those lunches are not free. (I am not charging anyone any kind of fee, nor asking for anything like recognition (I guess I might sometime get some recognition), but I don't feel like that is a motivation for my efforts. (And I'm intentionally not describing those efforts,
they are not related to my comments on this (or any other) mailing list.)

We are also very aware that info on the suppliers of such funds is a
valuable commodity to the hacker. There are quite a number of American
based charities I do not contribute to simply because they insist on
ones social security number. That ain't gonna happen. Make it the equ of
me handing you a $50 bill, untraceable cash, no strings attached. It's
my thank you.

The reasons that there are quite a few charities that I do not contribute to has to do with two (related) things:

* How much of my contribution actually makes it through to the targeted (trying to think of the right word) -- maybe just the target -- actually to a disabled veteran, or starving child, or ...

* How much money the top executives of the organization make. I won't get into detail here, but if they are taking home $350,000 a year and expecting donations from people making $30,000 a year (by advertising on TV looking for contributions of, for example, $19 a month, I have a problem with that.

Further (is this #3? -- I can't count ;-) in some cases those charities advertising on TV use names similar to the names of some actual charitable organiztion, but they are not actually that organization and they pass through only a very small portion of their income to that charitable organization.

Just to make up an example (and picking on maybe a recognizable name just so the example is, I hope, easeir to understand:

There is a St. Jude's (children's?) hospital.

Imgaine that there is also an organization named "Friends of St. Jude's" (completely made up as far as I know). Imagine that they advertise on TV seeking $19 per month contributions, and then pass on a fraction of that to
St. Judes?

Your contribution is diluted twice -- by the overhead of St. Jude's Hospital itself and the overhead of "Friends of St. Judes" (and it is quite possible (I've found several examples) that the top (5?) executives are taking home upwards of $350,000 / year each.

--
rhk

(sig revised 20221206)

If you reply: snip, snip, and snip again; leave attributions; avoid HTML;
avoid top posting; and keep it "on list". (Oxford comma (and semi-colon) included at no charge.) If you revise the topic, change the Subject: line.
If you change the topic, start a new thread.

Writing is often meant for others to read and understand (legal documents excepted?) -- make it easier for your reader by various means, including liberal use of whitespace (short paragraphs, separated by whitespace / blank lines) and minimal use of (obscure?) jargon, abbreviations, acronyms, and references.

If someone has already responded to a question, decide whether any response
you add will be helpful or not ...

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video (or "audio"): not so much -- divide by 10 for each minute of video (or audio) or create a transcript and edit it to 10% of the original.

A speaker who uses ahhs, ums, or such may have a real physical or mental disability, or may be showing disrespect for his listeners by not properly preparing in advance and thinking before speaking. (Remember Cicero who did not have enough time to write a short missive.) (That speaker might have been "trained" to do this by being interrupted often if he pauses.)

A radio (or TV) station which broadcasts speakers with high pitched voices (or very low pitched / gravelly voices) (which older people might not be able to hear properly) disrespects its listeners. Likewise if it broadcasts extraneous or disturbing sounds (like gunfire or crying), or broadcasts speakers using their native language (with or without an overdubbed translation).

A person who writes a sig this long probably has issues and disrespects (and offends) a large number of readers. ;-)
'

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On 1/31/23 09:04, Thomas Schmitt wrote:

Hi,

how does it actually work?

Most of the software in the Debian operating system is taken by Debian
for free from "upstream" projects.

For example i maintain as upstream developer libburn, lisofs, and
libisoburn with their applications cdrskin and xorriso. They are not
specific to Debian or to GNU/Linux.
I support Debian especially by preparing the Debian packages of my
upstream projects. Those get signed and uploaded by Dominique Dumont
who holds a Debian rank, unlike me. See what Debian makes out of my
upstream package libisoburn:
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libisoburn

I don't get paid for this. It's for fun, curiosity, and conscience.
An easy way to pay back to the world for what i take from it for free.
During the years i got some donations for hardware costs. But that's not
a significant motivation for me.

Aside from getting upstream's work for free, it is quite some work to
prepare all the Debian packages and to coordinate their dependencies (the further software which a package needs to work). That's why several other GNU/Linux distros take the bulk of their packages from Debian for free.

So everybody is taking advantage of everybody. Those who don't maintain software can contribute by submitting bug reports or other feedback.

Of course, one has to be able to afford giving away ones work.

I still work in the proprietary IT industry. The customers see no
problem with paying my employer and to charge their customers.
A completely different social model.
Free software development in large parts swims on top of that model.
It is quite astounding that this coexistence works since decades.
Obviously it benefits both sides.

Have a nice day :)

You too Thomas. Very well said Thomas, clarify's it pretty well for the newcomer trying to figure out our model of TANSTAAFL.

Take care and stay well.

I do much of my support by running the current master of linuxcnc, which
is in the process of being inducted into debian bookworm, updated from
the buildbot many times weekly, on 4 machines I rebuilt and cnc'd as a
hobby, reporting bugs or in one case, after a couple years complaining
about it, getting two things fixed recently, making it a bit easier for newcomers to cnc to configure their machines to do the work they may do
for a living. I am in fact a retired for over 20 years, broadcast
engineer, and a CET. I fix EE's mistakes cuz the school's profs didn't
teach them well enough, passing out sheepskins that weren't always
deserved. That obviously is a different subject. And one I cannot
readily fix. So I'll shaddup now.

Thomas

.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>

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tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 02:05:16PM -0500, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

The reasons that there are quite a few charities that I do not contribute to
has to do with two (related) things:

Quite the Scientific Method (TM). Making a few things up to make your
point :-)

Now: Pick one. Prove that it's bad (for a 501, as the SPI is, it
should be feasible: AFAIK their records are open)

Because SPI is a US registered charity, it is covered by
charitynavigator.org:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/113390208

which says that as of the last tax failing, SPI spent 94% of
income on their purpose, rather than overhead.

-dsr-

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On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 02:05:16PM -0500, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

The reasons that there are quite a few charities that I do not contribute to has to do with two (related) things:

Quite the Scientific Method (TM). Making a few things up to make your
point :-)

Now: Pick one. Prove that it's bad (for a 501, as the SPI is, it
should be feasible: AFAIK their records are open)

Cheers
--
t

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rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 05:34:49 AM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project.

That being said, there are certainly developers out there, who are
working on company time, to make contributions to Debian (and other)
open source software.  And folks at places that host the work - like the
OSU OSL - are certainly drawing salaries from their parent
institutions.  I expect a lot of that work is grant funded.

Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown

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On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 02:53:46PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:

rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 05:34:49 AM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project.

That being said, there are certainly developers out there, who are working
on company time, to make contributions to Debian (and other) open source software.  And folks at places that host the work - like the OSU OSL - are certainly drawing salaries from their parent institutions.  I expect a lot of that work is grant funded.

And there are enough free software (excuse me if I prefer that spelling) friendly companies. Redhat pours a lot into Linux kernel development,
which makes Debian better; many Canonical employees have been also Debian developers; Freexian [1] has a business model which benefits Debian,
yadda, yadda. Then there are those companies selling pre-installed hardware (System76, around here it's Tuxedo). Then more education oriented
(Linux hotel, again, around here).

It's not for lack of choices.

Cheers

[1] https://www.freexian.com/
--
t

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On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 2:54 PM Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:

tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 02:05:16PM -0500, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

[...]

The reasons that there are quite a few charities that I do not

contribute to

has to do with two (related) things:

Quite the Scientific Method (TM). Making a few things up to make your
point :-)

Now: Pick one. Prove that it's bad (for a 501, as the SPI is, it
should be feasible: AFAIK their records are open)

Because SPI is a US registered charity, it is covered by
charitynavigator.or <http://charitynavigator.org>g

I use Amazon Smile with SPI so my shopping benefits open source.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/113390208

which says that as of the last tax failing, SPI spent 94% of
income on their purpose, rather than overhead.

-dsr-

--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org/
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀

<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 2:54 PM Dan Ritter &lt;<a href="mailto:dsr@randomstring.org">dsr@randomstring.org</a>&gt; wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="
gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><a href="mailto:tomas@tuxteam.de" target="_blank">tomas@tuxteam.de</a> wrote: <br>
&gt; On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 02:05:16PM -0500, <a href="mailto:rhkramer@gmail.com" target="_blank">rhkramer@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br>
&gt; <br>
&gt; [...]<br>
&gt; <br>
&gt; &gt; The reasons that there are quite a few charities that I do not contribute to <br>
&gt; &gt; has to do with two (related) things:<br>
&gt; <br>
&gt; Quite the Scientific Method (TM). Making a few things up to make your<br> &gt; point :-)<br>

Hi,

rhkramer@gmail.com wrote on 31/01/2023 at 19:50:06+0100:

On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 05:34:49 AM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project.

Well that may be true in the case of certain Debian organizations, but
I doubt there is any "universal" rule that would keep me from making a donation to some Debian organization specifically for the purpose of
paying a developer for developing (or maintaining), for example, some specific package / software.

What is a Debian Organization?

--
PEB

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Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote on 31/01/2023 at 20:53:46+0100:

rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:

On Tuesday, January 31, 2023 05:34:49 AM Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:

There are also individuals making such donations.

That being said, these donations can't be used to pay a Developer for
its work in the project.

That being said, there are certainly developers out there, who are
working on company time, to make contributions to Debian (and other)
open source software.  And folks at places that host the work - like
the OSU OSL - are certainly drawing salaries from their parent institutions.  I expect a lot of that work is grant funded.

I think you need to re-read my mail you're replying to.
--
PEB

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