Proposal: Raising Funds for TWiki-Development

This document is about, how to raise funds using an independent formal body for TWiki, that is legalized and controlled by the TWikiCommunity.

Goal: Raise funds (money) for programmers

The main goal of this venture is to raise money to fund programming projects. There is no plan to fund any other activity like management, marketing, strategy planning, basic organization or representing. Only programming efforts shall be funded.

Why that? To keep the tasks of the money clear and straight forward for everyone. And to focus on results. To contribute to the fact, that good programmers are the one rare and scarce ressource. There are a lot of people who can do the management and have good ideas. We need those who deliver results. And those are mainly and most desperately needed: programmers!

Who raises the funds?

All money will be collected by a non-profit-association in Germany. Its name shall be "TWiki e.V.". "e.V." stands for "eingetragener Verein" which means "registered association". (It is not clear yet, whether PeterThoeny will allow this entity to use "TWiki" in its name.)

The association will be run by community members on behalf of the community. MichaelDaum and MartinSeibert drive this effort and will be most likely be part of the founding members. We will make sure, that no individual can get hold of the money, but that is it legal property of the association and bound to the decision of the TWiki-community-members.

How are funds raised?

We will simply create a Paypal-account. Every means of payment that Paypal offers will be acceptable for donations. There will not be any other account, that is used for transactions. It is possible though, that German law requires a bank account with a German bank. We will use the Paypal account for all transactions.

How is the raised money distributed?

Distrubution by Voting on Funds As it is the will of the community not to let few individuals decide on the distribution of funds, it should be a task for all TWiki-members. At first every Community-Member should be able to vote for or against a proposed project. This is how funds should be distributed:

• Every project is measured in TWiki-funding-points. Each point is worth 25,00 USD.
• The measure of TWiki-funding-points is defined by the shortest amount of time, that a community member evaluates for the completion a project. Example: "I think this boring work would be fulfilled be Max Miller in 2 hours. It should be worth 2 points or 50,00 USD."
• Projects can be granted by the community before or after their completion. But each proposed project has to be proposed within 1 month.
• A project proposal can be raised by the project members themselves or by others.
• A project is not funded until the community had 7 days to vote on it.
• A project is not funded if 3 community members object on funding it. There is no need to argue or reasoning about objections.
• A project is not funded if not at least 5 community members, other than the one proposing it, approve it and vote for it.
• A project cannot be funded, if the PayPal-account does not have enough balance. In that case all approved projects are funded in chronological order as money "arrives".
• After 6 months projects, that could not be funded expire.
• Everybody can vote on a project until it is approved by the above mentioned rules and can be funded from the available TWiki-funds.
• Projects are not funded, if the project members object to accept the money. Then the money goes back to the fund.

Transparency

It is very important, that the newly founded association is trusted by the community. The most important part is, that the flow of money has to be public and transparent for everybody. Every TWiki-user how ponders about giving a donation to the association shall be able to find out, what it uses the money for. These are the requirements, that I see:

• Incoming funds have to be reported regularly. The source of the donation may be kept anonymously though.
• Every outgoing money must have a URI of the distribution-voting in it, so that everybody can check, what the money was used for.

Why go for it?

This is why we need to raise money for the development of TWiki.

• Faster development cycles
  A much improved and speedier development cycle with more and more feature improvements in the TWiki software is waiting for us, if we raise enough money.
• More active programmers needed
  TWiki needs much more and active programmers to keep up with the speed of developments in competing wiki software systems. A perl based system has special challenges, as Perl is still a very popular web language, that is used in a lot of web software environments. Unfortunately a lot of new programmers choose to learn other web programming languages, which lowers the amout of available and free perl-developers.
• Motivation for existing programmers to enhance the core
  Existing programmers do a lot for the core. And this venture is not to decrease their activity but to reward them for their contributions and to motivate them, to do more.
• Funds add up to the current contributions
  Other than a couple of fears that where expressed, we are convinced, that funding the work of individual programmers will not lead to a situation, where only people, who get funded, do something. This is not true for all the other open-source-projects with funds either. Funds rather add up to much more and additional contributions and to the possibility, that important core developers can focus on certain tasks for a longer time.
• 25 USD per hour is not much
  As funding is limited to 25 US-Dollars per hour at first, it will not be possible for individuals to make a living out of this work. This way every contribution by a programmer will still be a contribution to the TWiki-software by the programmer himself.
• Why only programming?
  There may be times, when the association has collected so much funds, that also other work can be funded. But the same voting process will apply. And I would hope, that we will see a lot of new features and improvements in the software beforehand.

This concept is not approved and decided. It is rather a proposal. Please help us to get to know your opinion by giving a comment below. Feel free to alter the whole document where appropriate to improve it.

Next steps

1. Discuss, discuss, discuss
2. Get approval from PeterThoeny for the usage of TWiki as a name for the association.
3. Found it.

We are looking forward to a fruitful discussion.

-- Contributors: MartinSeibert - 31 Aug 2008

Discussion

1. I really don't agree with the "only programmers" statement. This project has historically suffered from a lack of other, non-programmer talents, such as web design, graphic arts, writing, marketing. These people need funding just as much.
2. How do you stop multipe community members from the same interest group (company) voting for each-others proposals?

Other than that, it sounds fine!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 31 Aug 2008

Crawford: 1. My experience is, that the programmers are rare and valuable. I just want to have the possibly low amount of money for the most crucial things. But that is up to the community. That is to be defined by the community.

2. It just needs 3 people to deny a proposal within 7 days. Every attempt to trick should be catched by this rule.

-- MartinSeibert - 31 Aug 2008

One other point; I think it is critical that it has "TWiki" in the name. Otherwise approaching potential sponsors cap-in-hand would be a non-starter.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 31 Aug 2008

First of all, money is no good incentive to drive open source development as it basically dries out any volunteer unpaid development. I would expect contributions to fade out over time, instead of speeding up. Second, you won't get the status of a non-profit association (e.V.) and be exempted from taxes in Germany when you in essence collect money that is used to finance work for hire. Basically, such an organization organization can only pay for expenses but won't be able to pay fees to individuals. Personally, I would like to keep the project based on volunteer development. Money does change the game fundamentally, no matter if it is spent using legitimate means like voting.

Using Paypal for all transactions is quite expensive. There might be cheaper ways to do that.

Transparency is needed anyway to keep up the status of an e.V. by means of quarterly reports and financial auditing.

The described voting mechanism should be defined more precisely and in a more general way to be reusable for other decisions as well. 7 days is too short for a voting period. In any case this should be expressed in an Articles of Association that its members have to ratify to be legitimate. So before we can implement the proper procedure of raising funds and spreading them, the exact purpose of the association has to be written down. All monies will have to addher to this purpose and can only be spent within its scope. So before anything can be raised, the proper organs of the association have to be build up, i.e. the general assembly, its members and the board.

-- MichaelDaum - 31 Aug 2008

Let me first repeat what was recorded in the last TWikiMarketingMeeting2008x08x25:

• PeterThoeny will not block the idea nor will he actively support it.
• Peter doubts, that the distribution of funds will be easy: "i am with kenneth, i am not convinced that the non-profit is the right thing to do (question how to distribute money for work already performed), but i do not want to block if you want to try it out. personally i think a system to coordinate work to be done and compensate accordingly would be better"
• MartinSeibert still believes in this concept for the distribution of funds.
• PeterThoeny will not be involved.

I think the non-profit org for fund raising purposes is an interesting experiment. Personally I do not want to be involved because I do not want to be the person to decide who gets how much for work already performed. Secondly, I can't be involved because I do not want to complicate my tax situation (I already spent thousands of dollars out of my own pocket for the open source TWiki project). That is the reason why you should use a neutral name such as wikifunding.org or the like. This also allows you to shape the organization in any way you wish.

I share the concern with Michael Daum that the system as proposed dries out volunteer unpaid development. I think it is more healthy for the community to establish a system where money can be distributed for work to be performed. Aka a marketplace for consultants.

-- PeterThoeny - 31 Aug 2008

While the above first approach is by no means perfect or final, it is paramount to understand that TWiki does need a more formal body able to manage donations. We desperately need funding for various reasons and purposes. Without them TWiki will fall back to being pseudo-funded occasionally, like Motorola honorably does from time to time. We can't rely on them on a regular base. Nor can we rely on TWiki.net funding TWiki. There are too many conflicts of interests.

Creating a formal body for TWiki is the right thing to do.

Not naming it TWiki e.V. or TWikiFoundation or TWikiAssociation and people won't get it: it will be a stillborn child. This is no "interesting experiment". This is part of rearchitecting TWiki - no less. It is ultimately coupled with the TWikiGovernance question. Distribution of money will always be voted on by the members of the community. No single person is ever deciding on it. Money isn't payable to individuals, for tax reasons as well for the reasons outlined above. A lot of the current core developers already get payed for the work they donate to the TWiki project and thus don't need a second funding. I hope you recognize how important fund raising is to grow up TWiki and secure its future. If not, you will be disappointing not only me.

-- MichaelDaum - 31 Aug 2008

The Paypal account has the drawback that it wold allow companies like Motorola to donate, but if the experiment is a success then it can evolve to receive donations from other companies.

Another idea that I think is simpler and deserves to be discussed is to AllowDevelopersToCollectDonations. See there for the details.

This allows donation to be a bonus to a work well done, and not the mean for a work well done, which will keep TWiki from being "fund-driven", which I think is a major concern for some.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 31 Aug 2008

As mentioned in the Marketing Meeting Minutes I wonder if the german tax authorities will give tax privileges to an association (e.V.) whose only purpose is to distribute money. But maybe there are other forms of organization out there. In case of an e.V. we should talk to the KDE folks and ask them, whats important. (We should establish the association in the same town as KDE e.V. did - tax offices act very differently here in Germany.

The word "TWiki" in the name of the organization is crucial otherwise we dont need to expend the efford.

Nontheless I think, we need such a body. Even if its only to have a point of contact for the rest of the world.

-- OliverKrueger - 31 Aug 2008

KDE e.V. is a very good template for us. I have studied their documents in large detail to get a clear picture about how they work. Have a look at their http://ev.kde.org/reports/ of activities, just to get an idea of what such a body can do.

-- MichaelDaum - 01 Sep 2008

As a Software developer I don't understand the wasteful desire to create a new organisation, when there appear to be several existing open source support organisations, such as SPI, FSF (and I expect that the EU has similar) that not only have fully functioning foundations, but also have experience in doing all of these things.

I realise its fun to pretend that we have the knowledge, experience, and time to make our own, but seriously?

-- SvenDowideit - 02 Sep 2008

Yes, seriously.

-- MichaelDaum - 02 Sep 2008