Please comment on
http://paivakil.port5.com/writings/protectyourcode.shtml
Not yet published -- except here.
On Thursday 30 Sep 2004 6:17 pm, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
Please comment on
http://paivakil.port5.com/writings/protectyourcode.shtml
Not yet published -- except here.
just glanced, not read completely. But thought why Eric's bazaar model may not work in the long run. cuold you comment on that.
Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna G. wrote:
On Thursday 30 Sep 2004 6:17 pm, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
Please comment on
http://paivakil.port5.com/writings/protectyourcode.shtml
Not yet published -- except here.
just glanced, not read completely. But thought why Eric's bazaar model may not work in the long run. cuold you comment on that.
If assignment is for reasonable consideration, it could evolve as a viable alternative to the Bazaar Model, that we can call the Institutional Model. Some essential projects just won't sell at the bazaar, and it would require institutional support for survival.
Eric S. Raymond, in his well known Software Release Practice HOWTO at http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Software-Release-Practice-HOWTO.html#HO... along with others have been suggesting for a long time, assignment of works in favour of FSF or like orgs to safeguard community interests in free software code. In the bazaar model, free code gets wrapped as open source, developed and "sold" in the market. The unsold stock gets discarded with no takers. The bazaar alone cannot be allowed to decide what develops and what does not. An alternative to the bazaar model has been around for a long time, but we need to give a formal shape to the Institutional Model, and get things moving. The Institutional model is necessary to ensure that the developers are assured of a fair compensation for their work, regardless of how it fares in the bazaar.
Many students and developers frequently ask anxious questions in mailing lists about how free sofware could feed and support them. The bazaar model certainly serves businesses well, but it does not assure individual developers reasonable compensation for their contributions to the free software pool.
Recently, Vel Murugan, a Loyala College student, who contributed substantially to the Tamil PC project that enables users who know _only_ Tamil to use OpenOffice and other tools, fell ill, having lost both his kidneys. A plea for funds was put at the ILUGC list by Bharathi, Hari and writer Sujatha, the well known Tamil writer behind Tamil PC project also asked his readers to contribute. Thankfully, a philanthropist has come forward to meet the expenses of the treatment, and funds that were received towards treatment have been listed at: http://www.ambalam.com/sujatha/2004/september/sujatha26_02.html Projects such as the Tamil PC, and its developers certainly deserve a substantial grant or compensation for their work.
Fredrick Noronha and many have been suggesting micro-grants, and others kinds of fundings for free software projects. RMS mooted Software Tax. The free software code base is public wealth, and it is fair to expect governments to become the major source of funds and grants, that could be disbursed to deserving projects through FSF or other responsible institutions through the device of assignments.
E gov software is worth about Rs. 1400 Crores per annum in India. Surely, much of e gov software could be built from the free software directory, and for utilising free software, the gov could doante anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, to start with. These would enable FSF India to have its own hardware, mirroring facilities, state of the art distros, and provide fair compensation to developers who maintain the free software pool in good shape. The gov could save more than Rs.1000 crores or use it to meet infrastructure needs. Individuals or private entities would seldom be able to match the gov in funding and the gov has no other viable software source for its needs.
The question does arise, at what stage assignment of copyright or funding of a project is appropriate. Eric's bazaar model gives good clues:
<quote> Early reviewers and test audiences for this essay consistently raised questions about the preconditions for successful bazaar-style development, including both the qualifications of the project leader and the state of code at the time one goes public and starts to try to build a co-developer community. It s fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style [IN]. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originateoriginate a project in bazaar mode. Linus didn't try it. I didn't either. Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with. When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future. </quote>
Merely because a software is good, it won't automatically find takers under any model. Since free software is based on meritocracy, there is a better chance for good appreciation of meritorious projects.
Good funding along with assignments for valid consideration would help to evolve a good Institutional Model that will maintain and strengthen the foundations of free software.
Ramanraj K said on Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 11:33:35PM +0530,:
If assignment is for reasonable consideration, it could evolve as a viable alternative to the Bazaar Model, that we can call the Institutional Model. Some essential projects just won't sell at the bazaar, and it would require institutional support for survival.
While I do not speak for the FSF-I, I am not sure that FSF-I is in a position to provide consideration to people wishing to assign copyright over to it. I do not think other FSF organisations have such a practise either.
Fredrick Noronha and many have been suggesting micro-grants, and others kinds of fundings for free software projects. RMS mooted Software Tax. The free software code base is public wealth, and it is fair to expect governments to become the major source of funds and grants, that could be disbursed to deserving projects through FSF or other responsible institutions through the device of assignments.
Certainly yes. Even otherwise, it will be a wise idea for people working on GNU software to modify (for internal use) to contribute back their modifications to the community.
anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, to start with. These
How can than be? When babus make the govt spend 1.4 K, they can take a 10% `cut', which is much more these crumbs. ;---)
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I agree with most of what you're saying, except:
"Ram" == Ramanraj K <Ramanraj> writes:
Ram> [snip]
Ram> E gov software is worth about Rs. 1400 Crores per annum in Ram> India. Surely, much of e gov software could be built from Ram> the free software directory, and for utilising free software, Ram> the gov could doante anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, Ram> to start with. These would enable FSF India to have its own Ram> hardware, mirroring facilities, state of the art distros, and Ram> provide fair compensation to developers who maintain the free Ram> software pool in good shape. The gov could save more than Ram> Rs.1000 crores or use it to meet infrastructure needs. Ram> Individuals or private entities would seldom be able to match Ram> the gov in funding and the gov has no other viable software Ram> source for its needs.
Before anyone starts talking about donating to FSF (India or anywhere), please, once again, consider releasing the following information to the public:
- - Directors, board members and office holders of FSF India - - Salaries and allowances (if any) - - Statement of accounts for the last financial year - - Clear list of activities in which donated money will be invested - - Articles of association
The documents themselves aren't important; giving access to them to the public is highly important if we want to be considered leaders of freedom and openness.
Regards,
- -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur raju@kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F It is the mind that moves
On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 10:40:54AM +0530, Raju Mathur wrote:
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I agree with most of what you're saying, except:
"Ram" == Ramanraj K <Ramanraj> writes:
Ram> [snip] Ram> E gov software is worth about Rs. 1400 Crores per annum in Ram> India. Surely, much of e gov software could be built from Ram> the free software directory, and for utilising free software, Ram> the gov could doante anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, Ram> to start with. These would enable FSF India to have its own Ram> hardware, mirroring facilities, state of the art distros, and Ram> provide fair compensation to developers who maintain the free Ram> software pool in good shape. The gov could save more than Ram> Rs.1000 crores or use it to meet infrastructure needs. Ram> Individuals or private entities would seldom be able to match Ram> the gov in funding and the gov has no other viable software Ram> source for its needs.Before anyone starts talking about donating to FSF (India or anywhere), please, once again, consider releasing the following information to the public:
- Directors, board members and office holders of FSF India
- Salaries and allowances (if any)
- Statement of accounts for the last financial year
- Clear list of activities in which donated money will be invested
- Articles of association
List of board members is there on the fsf india page. None of the directors/board members get any salary. (the memorandm clearly says so by constitution). List of activities: too many to be listed. FSF India doesn't have money to print brochures to be sent to all the units in the country, send letters by post to a list of people whenever we want, no capital to print books, etc. (We already have a book to print urgently, a book in bangla written by DipankarDa) this book needs a budget of 100K we have only about 40k in the treasury). Most of the activities like meetings, workshops etc that a few of the volunteers are doing needs particularly for travel, boarding and lodging. FSFI spent around 15k for the Delhi event last year. We havent recovered that money. We attended meetings when Govts called us. We need money for travel in this way for such occassions. Several events in the country are ready to involve FSFI, but FSFI has no budjet to send speakers to those events. FSFI hired temporarily for a few months for a project FSFI did for Keltron. Lot of goodies, like stickers, hats, t-shirts need capital to print. We have no money to make a set of CDs for distribution while on advocacy activities. We need at least one full timer in Trivandrum and another in Mumbai. Web page maintenance is done completely voluntarily till now. But we do need a staff to do this. We wish to begin Membership program (associate membership) but cannot start in time since we have resource problems. We need money to get gnu.org web page translated in Indian languages (nine languages). To pay for nine good expert translators for so much of content on that very important site we need lot of money. Any sponsors. If we have more meney FSFI can have one person working for FSFI in each of the important locations in the country. We need money for compensate for that. BTW, these people cannot be part of the board (by constitution). When we some office support of this kind we can do several other things (including publishing summary of accounts etc.) One of our board members (you can guess who) at Trivandrum is single handedly working for the office keeping his career aspirations at stake. We want to do all this. At present, FSFI as a just born child needs nurturing, you can begin demanding when it grows. We also need someone to write all these requirements and put it up on the web page, I mean we want content developers (writers) for FSF India web page.
Articles of association is there on the webpage. How could you miss front page links? If you read carefully the memorandum, most of the items listed there need more human resource, all of which cannot be taken care by only voluntary means, since some of them need regular attention.
Most urgent: we need at least two full timers one at Trivandrum and another at Mumbai to run the office on a day to day basis, which means a minimum of 300k per year. (this amount is not for salary alone, but also to manage the office and accommodation of the persons). Any sponsors?
Nagarjuna
Nagarjuna G. wrote:
List of board members is there on the fsf india page. None of the directors/board members get any salary. (the memorandm clearly says so by constitution). List of activities: too many to be listed. FSF India doesn't have money to print brochures to be sent to all the units in the country, send letters by post to a list of people whenever we want, no capital to print books, etc. (We already have a book to print urgently, a book in bangla written by DipankarDa) this book needs a budget of 100K we have only about 40k in the treasury). Most of the activities like meetings, workshops etc that a
FSF USA has some tax exemption status from the government. What is the process for a non-profit organization to get a similar status in India?
Maybe having such a status will encourage more people to contribute.
- Sandip
On Tuesday 05 Oct 2004 10:22 am, Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:
Nagarjuna G. wrote:
List of board members is there on the fsf india page. None of the directors/board members get any salary. (the memorandm clearly says so by constitution). List of activities: too many to be listed. FSF India doesn't have money to print brochures to be sent to all the units in the country, send letters by post to a list of people whenever we want, no capital to print books, etc. (We already have a book to print urgently, a book in bangla written by DipankarDa) this book needs a budget of 100K we have only about 40k in the treasury). Most of the activities like meetings, workshops etc that a
FSF USA has some tax exemption status from the government. What is the process for a non-profit organization to get a similar status in India?
Maybe having such a status will encourage more people to contribute.
The procedure in India is to first get tax exemption for the organization. This we got recently. Now we have applied for extending this exemption to the donors of the organization. So this is already being processed. Let us hope after we get the exemption the situation will improve.
Nagarjuna
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Hi Nagarjuna,
Thanks for the details about FSF-India.
"Nagarjuna" == Nagarjuna G nagarjun@gnowledge.org writes:
Nagarjuna> On Sun, Oct 03, 2004 at 10:40:54AM +0530, Raju Mathur Nagarjuna> wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 >> >> I agree with most of what you're saying, except: >> >> >>>>> "Ram" == Ramanraj K <Ramanraj> writes: >> Ram> [snip] >> Ram> E gov software is worth about Rs. 1400 Crores per annum in Ram> India. Surely, much of e gov software could be built from Ram> the free software directory, and for utilising free software, Ram> the gov could doante anything from Rs. 10 to Rs.100 crores, Ram> to start with. These would enable FSF India to have its own Ram> hardware, mirroring facilities, state of the art distros, and Ram> provide fair compensation to developers who maintain the free Ram> software pool in good shape. The gov could save more than Ram> Rs.1000 crores or use it to meet infrastructure needs. Ram> Individuals or private entities would seldom be able to match Ram> the gov in funding and the gov has no other viable software Ram> source for its needs. >> Before anyone starts talking about donating to FSF (India or >> anywhere), please, once again, consider releasing the following >> information to the public: >> >> - - Directors, board members and office holders of FSF India - >> - Salaries and allowances (if any) - - Statement of accounts >> for the last financial year - - Clear list of activities in >> which donated money will be invested - - Articles of >> association
Nagarjuna> [snip]
Nagarjuna> Articles of association is there on the webpage. How Nagarjuna> could you miss front page links? If you read carefully Nagarjuna> the memorandum, most of the items listed there need Nagarjuna> more human resource, all of which cannot be taken care Nagarjuna> by only voluntary means, since some of them need Nagarjuna> regular attention.
Oops, my bad!
I presume FSF-I got audited last financial year; now if you could only publish that statement of accounts it'd be perfect. Of course, there's no legal compulsion for you to publish -- just a request from my side on behalf of whatever community I happen to be counting myself in this instant :)
Regards,
- -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur raju@kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F It is the mind that moves
-
Mahesh T. Pai -
Nagarjuna G. -
Raj Mathur -
Ramanraj K -
Sandip Bhattacharya