[Gpg4win-users-en] Gpg4win donations 2006 - 2015/Q1

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi Paul, Hi friends of Gpg4win,

On Monday 29 June 2015 at 17:49:31, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Sunday 28 June 2015 at 17:49:48, Paul wrote:
> > Emanuel Schütze <emanuel.schuetze at intevation.de> wrote:
> > > Total donations (since 2006):
> > >   10.230,15 EUR (= 448 donations)

some background about the donations (or "volunteer payments" as I call them):
Intevation is collecting and managing them for the Gpg4win initative ([1]).
For easier handling, we pay value added tax on them, so it is a regular
payment that Intevation can just spend for Gpg4win. Our policy is
to be transparent about the money and to use it for the best of 
Gpg4win, coordinated within our initiative.  

In the past we have used to reimburse the companies g10code and Intevation a 
fraction of their money they were spending on the maintenance of Gpg4win,
see [2] about the <2k€ since mid 2012. Little money over the 6 six years,
therefore little need for discussions.

Intevation (the company I co-own) has a policy in place that we
want to volunteeringly pay for the Free Software products we are using
depending on the value we are getting for our service delivery.
Our rule of thumb is to pay 1% of our revenue per contract or 10% of what
a license of a proprietary product would cost us [3].
So each contract team gets to estimate which FS products it is using 
and the fraction of value to the contract for each used product.

> > I was wondering if any of these donations are filtered upstream to
> > the projects that form a part of gpg4win? Perhaps you have a policy
> > in place? Perhaps you have reasons for not doing that? Perhaps you
> > already do it?!?

> Indirectly, we have given some of the money to the upstream initatives
> which projects we are packaging with Gpg4win. But we have not done this
> as systematically as we probably should be doing.

> E.g. for Claws Intevation donated 50 € in 2009.
> For Kleopatra Intevation donated to KDE e.V.

The two mentioned volunteer payments were done by Intevation when we had
a Gpg4win contract and other contracts that involved FS components from KDE.

> For all other top-level components our developers are also members
> of the initiatives.

BTW: I would consider Colin Leroy a part of the Gpg4win iniative when we was
more active. In addition Andre for example is active in KDE as well. So "our" 
people are partly active in all top upstream initatives.

Up to 2012 the money as been little and far away from covering the costs
of running the Gpg4win initiative itself. Given that the people mostly being 
their own top level upstream, so it did not make much sense
to come up with more elaborate policy of what do with with the money.
I think having a better policy would make sense if significantly more money 
would be coming in. Then we should make a more comprehensive list of FS 
components we are using (e.g. libpng is a sub level component) and 
subsequently to an estimation how much they are contributing to Gpg4win's 
value. This will be an effort, but it can also bear new insights.

As you, Paul, are writing from the Claws-Mail. I think you probably would want 
to know how much you are contributing to the "success" of the Gpg4win 
package. Maybe this would be a topic for another post?

Let me know how good I am answering your initial questions.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

[1] If you wounder why I prefer the term "Gpg4win initiative" 
over "projects" or "community", read
http://blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard/2012/03/lets-end-all-free-software-projects-quickly/

[2] 
http://lists.wald.intevation.org/pipermail/gpg4win-announce/2012-May/000052.html

[3] I proposed the 10% rule of thumb in my article from 2002 (in German), 
linked from http://intevation.de/~bernhard/publications/index.de.html

-- 
www.intevation.de/~bernhard (CEO)    www.fsfe.org (Founding GA Member)
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, Germany; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Owned and run by Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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