Paying long-term volunteers
From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.
| Image:400px-Unbalanced scales.svg.png | Please see the discussion on the talk page. |
Could CouchSurfing pay long-term volunteers?
If someone would work for CS getting paid with money coming in from donations, the community should have a say in what work is being done. But on the other hand, this would probably mean that really urgent things such as database problems would never be fixed. So, how to find out what the community wants? And, how much should this influence the work being done?
Contents |
Disadvantages
- ...
Advantages
- ...
Why?
- Is there an actual need?
Yes and no. No in that most people are currently just slowly using up all of their savings while working for CouchSurfing. Yes in that this cannot last forever and at the very least we will leave some people with a very bad aftertaste otherwise.
How much?
- 500 US$ per month is more than enough for a lot of low-budget travelers (like GuakaCS)
- while staying at a Collective it can be lower (down to 0 US$)
- travel costs to and from Collectives
- hardware acquirement (e.g. in case of stolen laptop)
Who?
People who are "irreplacable" and who are doing essential contributions can apply.
- system administrators
- people who deal with finances and legal issues 24/7
- programmers working on making a stable, reliable website (release manager?)
Depending issues
- Financial transparency becomes even more important
- Fundamental CS infrastructure must be safe (hardware, software and manpower, legal issues ...)
Alternatives
For programmers
(but not for e.g. sysadmins)
- Having a donate to the coder button.
All proceeds would go to the programmer pool. There would be a mathematical formula dividing these proceeds accoding to the commits of the programmers into the code.
- Open up the source code! It's very hard to actually develop for CS when one is not in the collective. A lot more people could and would contribute to the code if only it was a bit more accessible and they could do it from their homes, where they can hold a *paying* job. Note: this is not a complete substitution for the kind of realtime stuff that *needs* to be done at a proper "office" (or collective). There are some other barriers that make developing remotely difficult, but the NDA is the first and foremost roadblock. Off with its head! (Just for safety: this only means opening up the source code, *not* the data)
Threads in the Groups
- paying developers, 2007-2-12 12:30 in Brainstorm
Links
- http://www.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/netzpolitik-podcast_with_lawrence_lessig.mp3 - ~50min interview with lawrence lessig, quite a lot about it is about a sharing economy
