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Giftfile Project Primes Decentralized Gift Economy
belmo writes "Last week, the Giftfile Project unveiled developer documentation and reference software for the giftfile system. This system enables producers and supporters of computer files containing nonproprietary intellectual works to participate in a gift economy. Tax deductible lump donations, made to nonprofit intermediaries, can be allocated to these files in an automated and efficient manner, supporting transactions as little as .01 USD. Nonproprietary intellectual works include free software, music, and literature. To use the system, you don't have to go to some web site and register--it's decentralized, built on open standards, and does not depend on any for-profit entity. The project is currently targeting free software developers to test the system, help make it accessible to other computer users, and be its first participants."
This system enables producers and supporters of computer files containing nonproprietary intellectual works to participate in a gift economy.
I'm sorry, but I don't get it. Why do I need to "participate" in this "system"? When I post my software on my website under an unenbcumbered license, every and all can come by and grab it. And if I want the unencumbered software of another that has been publicly posted, I can go and grab it. Neither side needs a special system to participate in.
ESR was using a metaphor when we was talking about gift economies in his books. The analogy is not accurate, because computer files are not integral "things". Potlatches were gift economies, because when you give your neighbor a salmon, you had one less for yourself. But when you give your neighbor a copy of your software, you still have it yourself.
Gift economies were based on plentiful resources, but not unlimited resources. (and they also had a strong element of "oneupmanship")
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
> I have seen "Free" software that it is almost EXPECTED by the author that he get a "Donation" for it, kinda irks me and usually It gets dumped, If you want to charge for it FINE but dont try and hide it behind the guise of free software then BEG for green.
Yeah, how dare they encourage people to voluntarily donate to them.. the gall!
There are a lot of projects out there that are very deserving of financial rewards for all their efforts. I think this is one of the downsides to the "Free Software" movement. Too many people think of it in terms of "Free as in my cheap ass doesn't have to pay a dime for it", not in terms of the freedoms Mr. Stallman cares about.
I think if there was a viable mechanism for expecting/getting payments (the vast majority of shareware fails financially) many developers would use it. If it meant better software got produced, and more developers could make a living from it, that would be a very good thing.
that's not to mention the restrictions placed on those who may contribute their work by requiring contributers to license with a handfull of licenses.
The reason for supporting only nonproprietary works is to get tax exemption. If you're producing proprietary works then you're not entitled to that, and so you can try yourself to get people to donate to you, without tax exemption.
I agree that snail-mail only donations isn't great, but it's not like this will always be the only way to donate. This system looks like a good start to a difficult problem.
Personally, I think PayPal already covers the online donation territory in a far less political and more trustworthy fashion.
You trust PayPal? I think most people "trust" PayPal merely by default, not for any particularly good reason or evidence.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Actually, this raises two excellent points which I can't see addressed in the stuff on their website, and are my biggest concerns with the system as I see it at the moment.
First, how to verify that the creator of a giftfile is the "owner" of a work? In other words, what's to stop me from taking the Linux source, making a giftfile for it using my private key, and then distributing the giftfile in an effort to get donations? I can't see anything which prevents behaviour like this.
Presumably the digital signature in the giftfile allows one to verify that a particular work matches a giftfile. That would stop me from putting my giftfile with someone else's work (to try and get people to donate to me instead of the real author), or putting my giftfile with some random crap which I claim is something useful.
Second, how to deal with works which are the result of several authors. In the case of the Linux kernel, there are hundreds of authors, but there can only be one private key to sign the giftfile (I think). Once there are funds donated towards this giftfile, who gets the money? Does it all go to Linus? Or must an organisation (eg. Apache) be setup for every project which has multiple contributors? Or do we have a similar situation to my first point above, where each author makes their own giftfile and then donors have to allocate money to every author? (Or perhaps some sort of grouping system so I can say "split my $10 donation equally among all the authors of linux-2.6.6.tar.bz2"? But I'm not sure how this would fit into their decentralised model...)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
First off, the 'gift money' is only given to the [composer|programmer|author] on demand... Which means that any interest that acrues will end up as income to the 'giftfile' organization. Lacking any place to spend the money... Where does it go? (Fat salaries for employees and managers is my bet.)
Second off the proponents appear to making the suggestion that their should be multiple gift pools, which makes for a situation ripe with oppurtunities for fraud.
Thirdly; One also wonders how long the nonprofit status will survive, since the company isn't performing charitable, research, or educational functions, but is rather providing 'bank like' functions in distributing income to individuals. (They claim they are 'grants', but the fact that they are monies earmarked for an individual and payable to that individual on demand moves that claim onto *very* shakey ground.) The granting of status as a non-profit doesn't mean it can't be revoked, such revocation can also (for tax purposes) be antedated. (This entire 'thirdly' is mostly the thoughts of my wife... A CPA who has done tax and nonprofit work.)
Which means that any interest that acrues will end up as income to the 'giftfile' organization.
It is possible that any interest earned on a giftfile's balance be given to the giftfile's author, even if the realisticness of this is debatable.
Second off the proponents appear to making the suggestion that their should be multiple gift pools, which makes for a situation ripe with oppurtunities for fraud.
This is true. But it's part of their idea for a decentralised system, and it encourages competition between giftpools to best serve the public.
They claim they are 'grants', but the fact that they are monies earmarked for an individual and payable to that individual on demand moves that claim onto *very* shakey ground.
When I donate to particular charities, I'm often able to say what I want my money to be used for. I'm able to tick boxes which say that I want my money to be used only to help homeless kids, or only to provide aid to foreign countries, or not to be used for administrative costs. Well, in this case, I can "tick a box" which says that my money is to be used to support free software programmers. And there are lots of "boxes", so that I can tick exactly which programmers I think most need the help of my donation. Because the software in question (the software I'm supporting with my donation) is free software, I can argue that it benefits society as a whole since anybody can use it or improve on it. This is in comparison to donating money which ends up going to a homeless kid and helping them sleep somewhere at night. Don't get me wrong, I think that the homeless are a serious social issue, and I have nothing against spending money to help them - but I'm trying to show that the "bank-like" comparison is not necessarily as strong as the "charity-like" one. I can see the benefit in donating to homeless organisations and to free software programmers, but perhaps I can see more direct benefit (personally) in the latter.
Charities distribute money to help people who are less fortunate people, or to help society as a whole. That's what they do. I would say that providing an income to programmers whose work is freely available to anyone in the community is a charitable function, no less than paying the wage of a social worker.
Also, it's worth noting, as another poster has, that the "demand" of the giftfile owner is more of a "request" or "application". Ultimately the giftpool has discretion over where the funds go. However, if a giftpool starts withholding monies from giftfile authors, or otherwise "misbehaving", then donors are free to stop using them and move to another giftpool. I guess the hope is that this would be enough of a deterrant to stop giftpools from doing this sort of thing.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I see at least three major advantages of giftpool over competing systems (principally PayPal) through which authors might want to accept donations.
1. The system is decentralized. Anyone can set up a giftpool, so it seems pretty much certain that over time at least one trustworthy giftpool will emerge. If you don't like or don't trust Ebay, where are you going to turn to get the same services? Now there's an answer. And if you don't like or don't trust your giftpool, you can switch to a different one.
2. The system allows small donations with essentially no overhead. If you want to donate one cent to a piece of software, you can do it, and they will receive almost all of your one cent. It's my understanding that PayPal is not so efficient with small transactions, although perhaps someone will correct me.
3. The system interacts easily with machines. Somebody could easily write a plugin for Winamp that automatically sends a cent to the musician every time you listen to a giftfile MP3. With PayPal donations, a musician would have to set up a link on his website and hope that listeners loved his music so much they went to the trouble of finding his website and making a PayPal transaction. Realistically, people aren't going to go to this much trouble for more than a few songs they like.
And don't forget that there's nothing stopping an author from using both PayPal and Giftfile. Giftfile makes no restrictions on anyone, it simply gives another option to people who happen to be releasing works under the GPL or related licenses. If you don't want to use Giftfile, don't use it. But bashing it on the grounds you've given is absurd.
I, for one, will start using Giftfile as soon as people start publishing giftfiles I want. This is an innovation that couldn't have come soon enough, and props to the authors for designing a system that looks like it has potential.
Yes, but Ken Brown is a fucktard.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
I make donations to many organizations and projects, but there is a limited amount of money I have to donate, and I have to decide how to best allocate this money. If a project is very popular, there are more people who are likely to donate. If the developer of a wildly popular little utility is getting rich as a result of the donations, then great for him/her, but I don't see the need for an additional donation from me. The money would be better spent on a project that I think is important and useful but which is not so popular.
For a good example of a project with a policy of full disclosure, see http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Donation% 20Box.
An important feature of this site is that everyone
can see their own donations, even if anonymous,
so there is less likelihood to cheat and claim
poverty when the opposite might be true.