| ok, so point 1 is about making sure i don't accidentally lose control of the project. i am not sure that matters. if my life dictates that i focus on other things then this is a natural development. for me the guiding principles should dictate my behavior but not my priorities. (unless it comes to priorities within the project when they affect the community). saying that i have to stay on top of the project is claiming that i am the only one capable of leading the project. that may or may not be true. it also may or may not be important for me to keep being the leader of the project. there was at least one project that i started that i was eventually no longer using and i happily passed it on to someone else. if anything, as a behavior rule i'd add: step down when the project is no longer important to me. on point 2, i am not sure. most project founders have the problem to get even themselves funded. far from being able to fund others. and i disagree that not funding people from the start means it will remain a hobby project. just look at debian. it got huge without paying people to work on it, and infact attempts to introduce paying people caused a number of high level contributors to get upset and leave the project. so yes, funding does affect what kind of people are attracted to the project, but, funding others from the start is unrealistic. and the people i pay to work on my project are people who will leave the moment i stop paying them. they see it as a job and i see them as employees or contractors (and that is not hypothetical, i am in fact paying someone right now to help me on a foss project, and i get paid from that project too (so i am a contractor with a subcontractor)). before i got paid i was an inactive member of that community, and when i stop getting paid i will probably become inactive again because i can't afford to spend a lot of time to contribute while i have to work other contracts. so i am not sure there is a benefit to the community to have these people around. participation in a community tends to be voluntary. and communities either function well when everyone gets paid in some form, or noone. paying some people and not others is asking for trouble, unless the project is a commercial entity that needs paid workers to serve paid customers. but then again, the paid workers and the company itself are not considered part of the community, but instead they are the owners of the community. that's a different relationship. |
Not my intent at all. It's about signalling to existing users, prospective users, existing developers and prospective developers that the project is alive and kicking.