On 21-Jan-2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Debian fans, > > I have the following modest proposal : > > Debian should start charging for high-speed apt-get/dselect/whatever > downloads from it's sites. 56k is free, anything faster you pay for. > Then we can pay people to work on the not fun stuff that needs doing. > > And people who download ISO's to sell should be paying a LOT. > > And this is not a troll. > > Debian is worth it, although there has been a lot of grumbling about > it lately (some of it deserved). I personally would pay (more). > > I would like to see more effort directed at the "not fun" stuff in > development, like error handling, documentation, testing, correctness > of packaging. People working in their spare time don't like to do > these sorts of tasks and I don't blame them. > > I honestly think that more money could make Debian an even better > distribution. >
I have considered this a few times. Here are the issues I have come up with in no real order: Developers are scattered around the world. Handling the money transfer, legal issues, and taxes would be less than fun and require quite a bit more infrastructure. Deciding who does with work would also not be trivial. Setting up any way to accept money would make us setup a greater infrastructure to support it. Remember, we do not have a home office or a finance department. Debian is about freedom. Doing something to change this changes what Debian is. *** Now, with all of that said, I still like the idea of something like the Damian Conway Perl Serf. We pay a few Debian people a year to hack like crazy. Sounds doable, we just have to act.
