D-etractions A real world programmers view on D

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 28/08/12 00:28, SomeDude wrote:
> I wish Walter went on kickstarter to get public funds allowing him to hire a
> couple of full time developers.

Yes, but you have to be cautious about things like that.  Having people paid by 
the project to work on things can demotivate the efforts of other contributors.

There is another project I have some connection to where one of the major 
contributors, a freelance developer, started soliciting donations to enable him 
to dedicate work time to the project, with in particular a promise that if more 
than a certain threshold could be raised, he'd be full-time on it.

The effect of this was decidedly ambivalent, with several project members 
feeling they didn't contribute to the project so that other people could make 
money off it.  It's not clear that the extra time he dedicated was worth the 
loss of those other contributions.

It's a different thing if some 3rd party comes in and says, "OK, we're going to 
pay some of our staff to work on this project."  But having the project itself 
select certain people to be paid, or having project members solicit donations in 
this way, can be problematic.

At the very least you'd need to define the parameters and expectations quite 
precisely, so that people can see where it does or doesn't overlap with work 
they might have contributed as volunteers.