Sustainable Source Initiative

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Note: this post grew out of jaromil's ideas presented at the piksel conference in 2005.

Traditional fundraising (defined here as applying for goverment or private grants) is a fine way to raise money if you can expend a lot of time and effort. But what if you're solo, and working or going to school, and developing free software in your spare time? How can you find time to research foundations and write grant applications? What if you have philosophical concerns: you like free software because it liberates you from being dependent on large organizations, and so you don't want to turn around and become dependent on a large foundation for money.

The "kye" (pronounced 'keh') may be the anser. It is essentially an informal group bank, used since the 17th centry by Korean immigrants to fund small businesses (I assume other immigrant groups have similar plans; the kye is simply the one I am most familiar with). A group pools their money and gives it to one member of the group, who then uses it to start a business. The money is returned to the group according to a prearranged rules, and then the process starts again with the next member of the group. One person is chosen to supervise the proceedings; often, this person gets first use of the money.

What keeps someone from blowing their share on lottery tickets? Peer pressure. Think: you're in an unfamiliar country whose language you don't speak well (if at all), everyone you know is Korean, and you see these people every day within the Korean community and church. If you deliberately wasted their money, they would make your life hell. Also, it's not likely that a person who has a history of slacking off or of irresponsible behavior would be accepted into a kye. Remember, everyone in the group knows one another (and one another's previous behavior). The core value of the kye is mutual trust based on experience.

This is an ideal process for free software development: it's not by chance that the word "community" is applied so often to free software. My guess is that everyone who reads this could knows at least six people that they would trust with money for free software development. Even if you had to start from scratch by posting ot a mailing list, chances are that you'd know somebody who knows the people who responded, so you'd be able to get an informed opinion from someone you trust. Like I said above, mutual trust based on experience.

The process itself helps ensure its own success. A kye's first job is to decide on the specifics: will the money be used for software related items only (new machines, attending a conference, presenting at performance art fetival, etc) or can you use it to cover living expenses? How long does one person get to use the money before thay have to pay it back? Is interest charged, and how much? Can the group comment on the substance of the project (ie code, artistic impact), or just on how well (or poorly) the project is progressing? What happens if someone takes the money but doesn't work on their project? Or if they use it for a comjpletely different project? Does everyone give the same amount? If one person gives more, does he get use of the money for a loonger time?

The process of hammering out the answers to these questions brings out any divisive feelings and eliminates those who aren't truly committed to making the kye work, leaving a stronger, more committed and focused (but possibly smaller) group of people. It's particularly important to decide in advance how to cover negative situations (ie, if it turns out that someone diesn't have the time to give to their project that they thought they would).

Most importantly, what exactly the rules are is less important that that everyone agrees with them or at least feels that they have had their say in making them. Most groups are dominated by a few people. It's very important here that everyone's voice be heard. It can take years for everyone in a kye to use their share of the money; you don't want to be dealing with a few disgruntled people for all that time. You can always hire an arbitrator to act as a neutral third party for the process, but if you can't hammer out these details on your own it probably doesn't bode well for overall success.

You will probably not raise as much money with a kye as if you had followed the traditional funding route. But you will be guaranteed to actually get money (just because you apply for a grant doesn't mean you'll get it), the time frame of setting up a kye is shorter than applying for a grant when you consider time spent in writing the grant and sitting through the decision making process, you'll see people benefitting directly from your money, and individuals will benefit from the collective wisdom of the group as members share their experiences. It's the free software philosophy at work!

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Jaromil signals an interesting contribute: http://www.invece.org/article/financing.html

Financing your Free Software with Google AdSense
… or you have a new customer, Mister Free Software

If you are no longer a teenager and you develop free software, chances are that you have an hard time trying to make your paywork and your open source passion to play well together.

It actually depends on the way you contribute code. For some programmers it's just a distraction from the usual paywork time, small part of spare time spent for a good goal, having fun and learning something new. Other people think that most programming paywork is boring, and aim to spend as much time as possible writing free software. I'll focus on the last kind of programmer, the one that loves to write free software and more precisely the kind of free software he likes to write.

What people thinks about this? What is Google policy anyway?… To be continued!

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Take your time to examine the proposed list of "europeans of the year" on http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html. It is a good idea to vote for "no software patents" campain leader Florian Mueller, but even if you don't like to do so is a very good read.
For example the website shows how a big campaign for political pressure can be sustained europe wide.

And by the way, thank you Poland!

The vote for the European of the Year is a public Internet poll. Everyone can participate, not only Europeans. The poll opened on 22 September 2005 and will close on 11 November 2005. It is located on the Internet at http://www.ev50.com/poll

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Sustainable Debian Development:
Jaromil points out this link: http://wiki.debian.org/FriendsOfDebian.

FriendsOfDebian

An Idea For Debian Funding From The Community
Why do we need more Money?

In order to be able to afford more Debian work meetings (50 per year seems a conservative estimate) Debian needs more money. One can calculate with about 2000-5000USD/€ per work meeting, which would result in an overall sum of up to 250kUSD/€. Work meetings have proven to accellerate Debian development.
How would this work?

This could work much like the Mandriva Club, which "sells" a lifestyle feeling of coolness and l33tness for supporting Mandriva. (As far as i know it was the Mandriva Club that saved Mandrake from bankrupcy and made it profitable again, so there is a lot of potential in this concept.)

So the point is to emphasize lifestyle feeling and other activities that we want to encourage (like helping newbies, fixing/reporting bugs, keysigning and last but not least donating money)
…

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Per Platou brings our attention to Unesco's activity towards e-culture

About DigiArts
DigiArts is one of UNESCO’s major initiatives aiming at the development of interdisciplinary activities in research, creativity and communication in the field of media arts.

# AIMS of the project: Disseminate historical, theoretical, artistic, technical and scientific research in the field of electronic and digital arts, including interdisciplinarity study of the arts and the sciences;
# Promote information exchange, dialogue and communication among artists, scientists and technicians from different geo-cultural regions, especially enabling developing countries to develop their own approaches and practices in various disciplines and fields of knowledge connected to media arts;
# Support existing institutions and networks throughout the world in the transfer of knowledge;
# Encourage the use of electronic software among the youth for electronic communication and creation

It is coordinated by an interdisciplinary group of UNESCO professionals from different Sectors, both at Headquarters in Paris and in the Field Offices and also assisted by a network of international institutions working in the portal’s fields of competence.

The DigiArts project is advised by 4 international advisory groups and partners which provide overall policy guidance. Membership criteria for groups are geographic dispersion and expertise in their respective fields:

Check it out here: http://portal.unesco.org

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Welcome all to SUS website.
A long and interesting discussion sprouted from piksel¹ 2004 and concluded at the 2005 ediction.

In the next days some content will be inserted:

• a report over the last meeting and a link to the audio recording of the discussion
• a wiki for the members
• a link to the mailing list archive

1. www.piksel.no [back]

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