28 June, 2010

Influence of Money

Part of my blogs about Being Free is talking about the influence of money on (volunteer) contributors.

This is something discussed by a lot of people, so I won't add to this discussion, but it's interesting for sure so I include a few links for those who want to read up on it. For me, it started with this blog about money and motivation by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier and I initially followed a few links in there. A very early blog about the subject comes from the Gnome community (by Luis Villa) where this issue has been playing for some time. Stormy has also written a few excellent blogs about the subject. Stormy's opinions are worth following in general, and her experience in this area make for some insightful articles.

Let my give a quick summary here:
You can put money into development in 4 ways:

  • Bounties (bad, often hurts motivation of others)

  • Job (seems to work pretty well)

  • Grants (works very well)

  • Giving Shiny things (works very well)


Read on in this overview by Bruce Byfield from 2007, he painted a clear picture. For the latest insights, I'd say talk to Stormy...

2 comments:

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