The third paragraph of your post is at odds with the question at the end of your post. I was addressing the “most recent” train of thought, particularly because you did say “it all comes back to this question.”
And yes, I suppose I disagree with the premise of the question, or rather the context inferred thereof. I would be more surprised if the list Purism maintains includes items for which they do not intend to develop, particularly since donations are involved. I would find it very underhanded if, for example, lots of donations came in attached to Telegram, but there is never any intent to port Telegram to the L5
Sure, but the premise of my question would be if exactly one person voted for “Telegram” and put up a small number of dollars.
Yes, because I am thinking aloud and trying to interpret the tea leaves.
So it could still all come back to that question, to which several hypothetical answers have been offered.
Even with $10 from exactly one user, Purism will heroically get to that app by 2050.
Even with $10 from exactly one user, Purism will get to that app within a few years.
Purism will deem that the app’s simply never going to happen and refund the $10.
That app’s simply never going to happen and the $10 is a charitable donation to Purism.
Avoiding the fourth option could affect user behavior. That is, users might be more inclined to back “out there” choices (and hence potentially more honest choices) if they know that the money is not in practice just a charitable donation. Conversely, the charitable donation option could encourage “safe” choices / groupthink.
The premise of my posts I’ve been trying to communicate has two parts: A) there is no indication that either a dollar amount carries more weight than a number of votes or vice versa because they don’t specify what “support” means, and thus, B) all the questions and worry are moot if this whole thing is treated as a poll that has the option to donate money towards the development of things that make the L5 better.
I’m of the opinion that expecting something in return for a donation goes against the spirit of “donation,” but perhaps I’m alone in that opinion. It does save me a lot of heartache and worry, though, compared to what I’ve seen in this thread.
The problem arises where apps call themselves things like “Podcast Player”,“Recipes”, “Books”. It’s a waste of time to bother searching for things like that.
It’s great if you’re a [Gnome] dev and your entire world is [Gnome] applications but, outside of the respective ecosystem it’s totally generic and too difficult to find. It’s not just a problem with Gnome but with Google, GNU, Apple, Samsung, and others.
It could either be something like GNU Cash or something for cryptocurrency. Or even something that specifically holds credit card, gift card, or discount/rewards card information!
It’d be nice if we had links to each projects homepage!
Kieran has already answered more clearly than I probably would have, but I will say that to me the difference is that it would allow people to know upfront what their donation will go towards. Someone may be willing to donate more if it was going to a very specific cause that is really important to them. It’s not necessarily better but it is my preference.
It is true it’s difficult to know what is a realistic target, but I don’t think they necessarily need to reach them. My thought was more like: these are what we’re aiming for and in this time frame, help us fund X amount of development time towards that goal. If the work is not completed then it can be voted and funded again next time, and work continues on it.
As always, it is about communication. Purism didn’t start this topic. In not starting this topic, Purism didn’t get the opportunity to communicate the exact nature of this campaign. Likely the user who started this topic did not him- or herself understand the exact nature of this campaign. It went downhill from there.
Yes, I saw that. Very democratic.
I have mixed feelings about that. At the end of the day though, if it is an untied donation then Purism is free to allocate the funds in whatever manner they see fit - and per the FYA page that is still the case. Votes. Dollars. Apps they believe will generate further sales of the L5 (a goal I would still support). Other internal corporate priorities. Something else.
Anyway, I’ve said enough. It is what it is - and I now have a better understanding of what it is.
Yes. The same debate comes up about the tax system. Not that you get to choose to make the “donation” in that case but people may feel better about paying their taxes if they know some of the things that their taxes will specifically be funding, and how much has gone towards those things.
For Fiscal Year 2020 (FY2020), the Department of Defense’s budget authority is approximately $721.5 billion ($721,531,000,000). However, total U.S. military spending is estimated to be around $934 billion in 2020-21.[1][2]Approximately $712.6 billion is discretionary spending with approximately $8.9 billion in mandatory spending.
and that’s how every American votes with the dollar each year … what ?
Yes, you can either vote for Trump, who increased the military budget from $586 billion in 2015 to $716 billion in 2019, or Biden, who might get really ambitious and cut the military budget by a measly 2%. Of course, Biden has already declared that he will veto Medicare for All if congress ever passes it, because it is too expensive.
Hey, the rest of the world should be happy that Americans have insane “security” budgets, because that funded the creation of the internet, SELinux, GPS navigation, touch screen technology, and voice recognition.
Now if we could just get the US security state to make a donation to the “Fund Your App” campaign…
Before this discussion goes completely off the rails, it might be worth reminding people that there are many ways to fund application development. These obviously include the Fund Your App campaign, but also bounty programs and direct funding of apps via donations.
It is always good to consider how your hard-earned money is being spent. Choose the method of funding that you feel will achieve your goals. If you really want a particular app to run on the Librem 5 (or, indeed, on any platform) then you need to carefully evaluate how that could be most effectively achieved.
I think the “fund-your-app” system, as currently set up, works well for most things. The goal for “battery life” is obvious, the goal for many apps is “mostly obvious” (meaning: make work smoothly).
My expectation would be, that over the course of, let’s say, 12 months, most of the top 10 items will have changed, as the original top ten are less pressing then.
To fine-tune what Purism should work on, I’d say the Tracker (https://tracker.pureos.net/) could work well.
If you have a very specific feature that should be worked on, I’d try this:
Make sure there’s a tracker item for it
Find like-minded users on the forum
All who support the idea, fill out the “Suggest Another Applications” form on the funding page, stating what they would put down if the item was added to the list, along with links to tracker/forum discussion
I don’t agree that a donation isn’t quantifiable, but I do know that sometimes showing exactly what the money you donated went to can take almost as long time as the thing that needs to be done in the first place so it’s most often not worth it to do it very accurately.
However, I think the issue with fund-your-app is not that you don’t know what will be done with the money but that you don’t even know who will receive it.
For example, maybe I want to donate $100 to a few projects but don’t trust some other project in the list and that wins, then I have donated my money to a cause that I necessarily don’t even support!
What I’m trying to say is that it would be much better if the money went straight to the pockets of the project you support in that list and that it’s wrong that the money might go to something completely different than you actually donated money for. If you donate $30 and have selected firefox, battery life and chatty then each one of those projects should get $30 each and nothing else.
I personally view it as the money going to Purism, and then ultimately they’ll decide how best to spend the money since they’re the ones doing the development work. It’s not supporting “Firefox on the L5,” it’s supporting “developing things that make the L5 work better; BTW, I think you should focus on Firefox.”
Now, (staying with the Firefox example), if they’d come out and said “money attached to votes for Firefox will result in X amount of hours per Y amount of dollars for Z amount of time,” you could have an expectation of what you’re getting for your donation, because at that point it becomes an investment. But they didn’t, and so it isn’t.
Perhaps that’s the root of the confusion. People saw “donation that you can attach an opinion to” and interpreted it as “invest in these projects.” I think the latter is actually not the case.
