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Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery

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  Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-10-12 14:00 +0200
    Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Pierre-Elliott Bécue <peb@debian.org> - 2020-10-12 15:20 +0200
      Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-10-12 15:40 +0200
        Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-10-12 16:20 +0200
        Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2020-10-12 16:20 +0200
          Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> - 2020-10-12 23:40 +0200
            Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2020-10-13 08:00 +0200
              Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> - 2020-10-13 09:00 +0200
                Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-10-13 09:20 +0200
                  Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> - 2020-10-13 11:20 +0200
            Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2020-10-13 18:20 +0200
              Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> - 2020-10-13 19:20 +0200
      Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> - 2020-10-12 16:40 +0200
        Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Pierre-Elliott Bécue <peb@debian.org> - 2020-10-12 17:30 +0200
      Re: Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2020-10-14 16:50 +0200

#12074 — Fwd: protontypes wants to support the Debian Project with LibreSelery

Hi Debianites, Tobias from protontypes.eu asked that I forward this
message along. From what I understand, they want to make it easier to
fund individuals who work on free software.

He also confirmed that they're working on integrating their system with
GitLab, which needed some more work because it didn't have the "donate"
framework that GitHub uses.

If you have any questions, you can follow up here, I told them that they
can subscribe to the list to follow up.

-Jonathan

On 2020/09/24 19:35, Tobias Augspurger wrote:
> We are a group of motivated developers that created a new concept for
> funding distribution in FOSS without launching another platform.
> LibreSelery is a AGPL licensed tool that allows you to create
> customized, transparent, independent, and automated funding of FOSS
> projects.
> After our launch 2 weeks ago we are looking for feedback and early
> adopts in the community.
> 
> I have been using many Debian technologies and would like to show you
> how we distribute my donation of 1000€ on a Debian project that is
> mirrored on Github. 
> LibreSelery also allows you to include the contributors of your
> dependencies into the funding. They will receive an email from Coinbase
> with a "Thank You" note that you can define.
> This could help you to attract new developers.
> 
> At the moment we are just supporting Github but Debian would be a
> perfect partner to start with Gitlab support. Early support for Gitlab
> would also help us keep the software architecture generic.
> Do you think LibreSelery could be interesting for Debian?
> https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery
> <https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery>
> 
> Some background information on our project and organization.
> https://protontypes.eu/blog/2020/09/02/launch-of-protontypes/
> <https://protontypes.eu/blog/2020/09/02/launch-of-protontypes/>
> 
> Kind regards
> Tobias

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#12075

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Le lundi 12 octobre 2020 à 13:43:49+0200, Jonathan Carter a écrit :
> Hi Debianites, Tobias from protontypes.eu asked that I forward this
> message along. From what I understand, they want to make it easier to
> fund individuals who work on free software.
> 
> He also confirmed that they're working on integrating their system with
> GitLab, which needed some more work because it didn't have the "donate"
> framework that GitHub uses.
> 
> If you have any questions, you can follow up here, I told them that they
> can subscribe to the list to follow up.

So, if I understand well, the idea is to implement a way to have a
"donate" button on salsa which would rely on their work in background to
loadbalance the share between developers of a specific project?

If so, then I feel bad about this idea. Sure, the people paying wouldn't
be the project and hence its philosophy wouldn't be compromised in its
core, but still we would start advertising for payment, which is a huge
step in a way I fear the outcome.

Cheers,

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

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#12076

On 2020/10/12 14:56, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:
> So, if I understand well, the idea is to implement a way to have a
> "donate" button on salsa which would rely on their work in background to
> loadbalance the share between developers of a specific project?
> 
> If so, then I feel bad about this idea. Sure, the people paying wouldn't
> be the project and hence its philosophy wouldn't be compromised in its
> core, but still we would start advertising for payment, which is a huge
> step in a way I fear the outcome.

>From what I understand, part of their plans is to implement that for
GitLab. I agree that we might not want to enable something like that on
Salsa, I suppose that would depend on exact details (like, if it's just
something in an API as apposed to having donate button scattered all
over, then I don't think it's intrusive at all).

Maybe Tobias can give us a more complete description on how LibreSelery
would work.

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#12077

Hi Jonas

On 2020/10/12 15:54, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> Maybe Tobias can give us a more complete description on how 
>> LibreSelery would work.
>
> Probably he can, yes.  Is he subscribed here?

Yes, he subscribed this afternoon.

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#12078

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Quoting Jonathan Carter (2020-10-12 15:19:22)
> Maybe Tobias can give us a more complete description on how 
> LibreSelery would work.

Probably he can, yes.  Is he subscribed here?

I ask because a) you didn't cc him, and b) the original message was 
proxied through you.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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#12081

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Here is the rough concept of LibreSelery:



1. LibreSelery is a AGPL licenced command line tool that takes a git folder as an argument.

2. It collects all email addresses of the main project and all dependencies that can be resolved from https://libraries.io/ API. In this way, most package systems are supported.

We also provide a custom yaml file to add dependencies like Dockers or Debian to your project, which we can't detect simply by automatic scanning of the dependencies. 

3. The email addresses of contributors are collected from the git platform user profiles. If no public email is provided, no transaction for that user will be considered. 

4. Based on a contribution metric, funding is distributed among the contributors. The metric can be extended and configured by individual projects. Currently, activity and minimum contribution are considered. In our next version, we will extend the possible metric configuration based on code data and project data. In this way, the number of solved problems, merged pull requests, lines of code or the number of commits can be considered. Based on the weight value different kinds of contribution can be considered more than others. As all transactions are automatically made public, we hope that the Communities will adapt the weights and metrics to their needs. 

5. After the split is done, we distribute the money to the email address via the Coinbase API. You can define a custom note that will be attached to the Coinbase email. If the user does not have a Coinbase account to that email address, the amount will be deposited there for 30 days, informed by email about that and can withdraw the amount by opening the account.



LibreSelery can be run manually from the command line, but the main purpose is to integrate it into a CI pipeline. In this way, the funding is distributed with each push to the master or new version that is made. 



In this way, the financing of your project becomes completely transparent, as we push the visualization of the project transactions and the donation button into the wiki of the target project. In the CI log file all details of each individual run are visible. Storing the Coinbase tokens and git tokens in your CI secrets is also a good way to protect them from my experiences. 

Here the CI template:

https://github.com/protontypes/SeleryAction



We also have a very simple simulation mode to check how a funding distribution would look like in a single run. I hope we can extend the simulation to show what the distribution would have looked like based on the existing git history.





---- On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 15:54:26 +0200 Jonas Smedegaard <mailto:dr@jones.dk> wrote ----



Quoting Jonathan Carter (2020-10-12 15:19:22) 
> Maybe Tobias can give us a more complete description on how 
> LibreSelery would work. 
 
Probably he can, yes.  Is he subscribed here? 
 
I ask because a) you didn't cc him, and b) the original message was 
proxied through you. 
 
 
 - Jonas 
 
-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt 
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ 
 
 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private







Tobias Augspurger     


Co-Founder    


Mobile +4917643474156    


http://protontypes.eu

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#12082

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 9:31 PM Tobias Augspurger wrote:

> 5. After the split is done, we distribute the money to the email address via the Coinbase API. You can define a custom note that will be attached to the Coinbase email. If the user does not have a Coinbase account to that email address, the amount will be deposited there for 30 days, informed by email about that and can withdraw the amount by opening the account.

This is going to spam a lot of people who don't have a Coinbase
account and don't want one. How are you planning on mitigating this?
Where will the coinbase balance go if someone doesn't sign up for
their account?

BTW, the way Debian uses git on salsa for many teams (some just import
new upstream release tarballs into git rather than pulling upstream
git commits) means that funding would go to the Debian packagers
rather than the upstream developers who wrote the code, which seems
like the wrong thing to do.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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#12083

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> Where will the Coinbase balance go if someone doesn't sign up for 

   their account? 



It will go back into the sending wallet. This is also visible in the transaction history to consider for the future.



> This is going to spam a lot of people who don't have a Coinbase 

   account and don't want one. How are you planning on mitigating this? 



We are examining various measures here.



1. First of all these emails of course have an unsubscribe button. 



2. We are considering to send only one email per user. Since LibreSelery has the complete transaction history with all emails already used there is this possibility. With the skip_notification we can disable all the following emails. As soon as transactions come back after 30 days we can exclude the following transactions completely.



3. A CI scheduler gives us also the option to run LibreSelery once per month. In this way the number of emails can be reduced in general. I think that this option could be the best for most projects. 

It would also increase the total amount that is being sent out what makes the email more interesting. 




> BTW, the way Debian uses git on salsa for many teams (some just import 

  new upstream release tarballs into git rather than pulling upstream 

  git commits) means that funding would go to the Debian packagers 

  rather than the upstream developers who wrote the code, which seems 

  like the wrong thing to do. 



I'm just a user of Debian and do not know your workflow in development. However, due to its free characteristics, it can be adapted to different wishes. 

As long as these are technically possible and comply with the guidelines, we will be happy to help you adapt LibreSelery to different needs: 

https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/wiki/Contribution-Guide

We also want to encourage other communities to create their own forks to experiment with this concept. 



---- On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 06:11:36 +0200 Paul Wise <mailto:pabs@debian.org> wrote ----



On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 9:31 PM Tobias Augspurger wrote: 
 
> 5. After the split is done, we distribute the money to the email address via the Coinbase API. You can define a custom note that will be attached to the Coinbase email. If the user does not have a Coinbase account to that email address, the amount will be deposited there for 30 days, informed by email about that and can withdraw the amount by opening the account. 
 
This is going to spam a lot of people who don't have a Coinbase 
account and don't want one. How are you planning on mitigating this? 
Where will the coinbase balance go if someone doesn't sign up for 
their account? 
 
BTW, the way Debian uses git on salsa for many teams (some just import 
new upstream release tarballs into git rather than pulling upstream 
git commits) means that funding would go to the Debian packagers 
rather than the upstream developers who wrote the code, which seems 
like the wrong thing to do. 
 
-- 
bye, 
pabs 
 
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise 
 








Tobias Augspurger     


Co-Founder    


Mobile +4917643474156    


http://protontypes.eu

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#12084

Hi Tobias

On 2020/10/13 08:45, Tobias Augspurger wrote:
> 1. First of all these emails of course have an unsubscribe button. 

I can tell you that if it's opt-out instead of opt-in, then that would
make it a non-starter for Debian.

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#12085

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> I can tell you that if it's opt-out instead of opt-in, then that would 

   make it a non-starter for Debian. 



I have been thinking about this problem for many sleepless nights and it is indeed a challenge of the concept. The best thing would be to make it globally visible in your git profile if you want to accept donations in this way or not.  For the main project, we can make a list of all the email addresses we consider. I have created an issue and fdietze has suggested this.

https://github.com/protontypes/LibreSelery/issues/185



The problem with this approach is that is will get much harder to share your funding with the developers of your dependency tree. What you could do is to send them at least the first email asking them to subscribe to the list if you want to receive further payouts. Another solution would be to check if the dependency itself uses LibreSeley. This way we could distribute the payout to the LibreSelery wallet of project. This solution was already described by Nick here in more detail:

https://github.com/protontypes/LibreSelery/issues/175#issuecomment-691178393



Thus, the concept could be made opt-in and at the same time take dependencies into account.



Do you think that could be a possible solution?



---- On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:13:19 +0200 Jonathan Carter <mailto:jcc@debian.org> wrote ----



Hi Tobias 
 
On 2020/10/13 08:45, Tobias Augspurger wrote: 
> 1. First of all these emails of course have an unsubscribe button.  
 
I can tell you that if it's opt-out instead of opt-in, then that would 
make it a non-starter for Debian. 
 
-Jonathan 
 
-- 
 ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc> 
 ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage 
 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org 
 ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system. 
 








Tobias Augspurger     


Co-Founder    


Mobile +4917643474156    


http://protontypes.eu

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#12086

Tobias Augspurger <tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> writes:

> 5. After the split is done, we distribute the money to the email address
> via the Coinbase API.

Are you investigating other payment options, or is LibreSelery expected to
only support Coinbase?

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)              <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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#12087

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> Are you investigating other payment options, or is LibreSelery expected to 

  only support Coinbase? 



We try to offer the concept independently from individual companies.



According to our research so far Coinbase, Uphold and Paypal come into question.

We started with Paypal but switched to Coinbase. It is still a very hotly debated issue whether this was the right decision:

https://github.com/protontypes/LibreSelery/issues/169



Our next integration will be Uphold:

https://uphold.com/en/developer/api/documentation/#transactions



We are also currently investigating whether we are able to create a single code base architecture that can support multiple APIs in the future. 

I am actually not an expert in cryptocurrency. If you know more crypto markets with similar APIs we would be very happy to support more.



---- On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:11:51 +0200 Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote ----



Tobias Augspurger <mailto:tobias.augspurger@protontypes.eu> writes: 
 
> 5. After the split is done, we distribute the money to the email address 
> via the Coinbase API. 
 
Are you investigating other payment options, or is LibreSelery expected to 
only support Coinbase? 
 
-- 
Russ Allbery (mailto:rra@debian.org)              <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> 
 








Tobias Augspurger     


Co-Founder    


Mobile +4917643474156    


http://protontypes.eu

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#12079

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I absolutely understand your fears. Whether a project wants to finance itself through donations and whether these are only used for central infrastructure depends centrally on the type of project and community. Of course, it changes the motivation of the people if the amounts distributed become larger. We take this into account right from the start of the project:

https://github.com/protontypes/LibreSelery/wiki/Transparent-Funding-of-Git-Based-Projects#human



LibreSelery should be seen as an alternative to Tidelift or GitHub sponsors. LibreSelery gives a FLOSS community the opportunity to distribute possible funds without further middlemen.  We are convinced that funding within open source is ideally distributed via open-source software itself. However, as the commercialization and financing of open source projects is increasing, we wanted to present a concept  that is more adaptable to different community requirements. In this way, it can be decided in a public process on the basis of a free tool how this is done.





---- On Mon, 12 Oct 2020 14:56:52 +0200 Pierre-Elliott Bécue <peb@debian.org> wrote ----



Le lundi 12 octobre 2020 à 13:43:49+0200, Jonathan Carter a écrit : 
> Hi Debianites, Tobias from protontypes.eu asked that I forward this 
> message along. From what I understand, they want to make it easier to 
> fund individuals who work on free software. 
> 
> He also confirmed that they're working on integrating their system with 
> GitLab, which needed some more work because it didn't have the "donate" 
> framework that GitHub uses. 
> 
> If you have any questions, you can follow up here, I told them that they 
> can subscribe to the list to follow up. 
 
So, if I understand well, the idea is to implement a way to have a 
"donate" button on salsa which would rely on their work in background to 
loadbalance the share between developers of a specific project? 
 
If so, then I feel bad about this idea. Sure, the people paying wouldn't 
be the project and hence its philosophy wouldn't be compromised in its 
core, but still we would start advertising for payment, which is a huge 
step in a way I fear the outcome. 
 
Cheers, 
 
-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue 
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2 
It's far easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. 








Tobias Augspurger     


Co-Founder    


Mobile +4917643474156    


http://protontypes.eu

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#12080

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Le lundi 12 octobre 2020 à 16:05:30+0200, Tobias Augspurger a écrit :
> I absolutely understand your fears. Whether a project wants to finance itself
> through donations and whether these are only used for central infrastructure
> depends centrally on the type of project and community. Of course, it changes
> the motivation of the people if the amounts distributed become larger. We take
> this into account right from the start of the project:
> https://github.com/protontypes/LibreSelery/wiki/
> Transparent-Funding-of-Git-Based-Projects#human
> 
> LibreSelery should be seen as an alternative to Tidelift or GitHub sponsors.
> LibreSelery gives a FLOSS community the opportunity to distribute possible
> funds without further middlemen.  We are convinced that funding within open
> source is ideally distributed via open-source software itself. However, as the
> commercialization and financing of open source projects is increasing, we
> wanted to present a concept that is more adaptable to different community
> requirements. In this way, it can be decided in a public process on the basis
> of a free tool how this is done.

I'm not against the idea at all, it's rather the opposite. But I think
it is not suit for the Debian Project as it is for now. Some people have
the luxury of being paid by their employeer to do Debian Stuff, others
do freelance for people using Debian systems, but in both cases, the
project has no ties to their funding, it's just people using their
status in their professional environment.

Here, the idea is to either have the project advertise (either passively
or actively) to fund people working on some projects, or to have it get
some developers funded and others none. This is a right turn I'd rather
not see in Debian.

That being said, if it is for experimentation purposes, maybe we could
help, but that'd be up to our salsa team.

So, all in all, I'm not against your project, but not keen on the idea
of having it implemented in Debian.

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

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#12088

Hi. With respect, I'd like to challenge the idea that integrating more
ways to get funded would undermine some core aspect of Debian.

I think there are two aspects that I consider when I think about the idea
that Debian is not funded by a particular company:

1) Independence.  Many people join Debian as a member of the community
and their actions in the community are  motivated by goals that last
beyond a particular job and that  we are able to act independently of
large commercial interests.

2) On the other hand I'm concerned that Debian developers can be under
funded.  We want to get more people involved in free software and
Debian.  We want to encourage sources of funding that are independent,
allowing people who want to be independent to actually be independent
and to find ways to make that work for them successfully.  The aspects
of independence I care about are actually enhanced if it is easier to
find funding for doing Debian work.

In my mind, finding initiatives like this that allow our members to
easily find funding for their work would significantly benefit the
community.  As an example, I think it would be great if people working
on core tools like Apt, Dpkg, Debhelper, had the option of accepting
funding for their work from diverse sources.  I think that finding ways
to foster that option for parts of our community who want it would be
very good.  The stuff we do actually does cost money.  And running away
from that rather than trying to hulp out community members who would
like to be funded actually gives more power to members of our community
who work for corporations or who are able to organize significant blocks
of money for a particular purpose.  I don't think that is a huge problem
in our community; I value the contributions of corporations who allow
their employees to spend significant tim on Debian.  But I also value
spending effort making other options possible.

--Sam

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