Long term financial sustainability - paid contributions, expanding what kind of work is paid #81

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decentral1se · 2021-06-19T09:12:21Z

decentral1se commented

2021-06-19 09:12:21 +00:00

Cracking off from https://git.autonomic.zone/coop-cloud/organising/issues/79.

I've been thinking about this a lot now that we have funding.

Basically, my role in working on this project has largely been enabled by the Dutch government providing social supports during the pandemic. I had some savings around that also but yeah, I had time to put into this. That is a privilege. I don't want Co-op Cloud to only be accessible to people who have the free time to work on this, unpaid.

I watched the following recently:

https://blog.opencollective.com/emergent-practices-from-the-decentralized-co-operative-web/

The video is totally worth watching but the 44:50 -> 45:56 minute is pure gold.

This is a snippet from the text:

Make invisible labor visible, and valued: We discussed how enabling people to secure a livelihood with their project does not just create more resiliency, it can be a way to make visible the types of the undervalued labor that too often goes undercompensated. Especially with tech-focused projects, all the work that goes into ensuring the tool or platform is successful is usually not as rewarded as the work of building the tool itself. That includes writing documentation, onboarding new contributors and end-users, and publicizing the product. A radical approach to money can get us to the root of these dynamics, and brings these all-to-prevalent labor inequities to the fore.

I'm really coming around to the idea of https://opencollective.com/ btw. There is also https://cobudget.co. I was checking https://sourcecred.io/ also. Anddd https://comradery.co/. Annnnnnnnd https://liberapay.com/.

I think it is important to try to build up this structure as soon as possible so that we can see how it can work in practice. After the grant funding runs out, we can use this process ourselves to get paid! I would hope that we could onboard people to contribute financially and then we can allocate those moneyz to a community driven roadmap. It could be really nice!

Cracking off from https://git.autonomic.zone/coop-cloud/organising/issues/79. I've been thinking about this *a lot* now that we have funding. Basically, my role in working on this project has largely been enabled by the Dutch government providing social supports during the pandemic. I had some savings around that also but yeah, I had time to put into this. That is a privilege. I don't want Co-op Cloud to only be accessible to people who have the free time to work on this, unpaid. I watched the following recently: > https://blog.opencollective.com/emergent-practices-from-the-decentralized-co-operative-web/ The video is totally worth watching but the 44:50 -> 45:56 minute is pure gold. This is a snippet from the text: > Make invisible labor visible, and valued: We discussed how enabling people to secure a livelihood with their project does not just create more resiliency, it can be a way to make visible the types of the undervalued labor that too often goes undercompensated. Especially with tech-focused projects, all the work that goes into ensuring the tool or platform is successful is usually not as rewarded as the work of building the tool itself. That includes writing documentation, onboarding new contributors and end-users, and publicizing the product. A radical approach to money can get us to the root of these dynamics, and brings these all-to-prevalent labor inequities to the fore. I'm really coming around to the idea of https://opencollective.com/ btw. There is also https://cobudget.co. I was checking https://sourcecred.io/ also. Anddd https://comradery.co/. Annnnnnnnd https://liberapay.com/. I think it is important to try to build up this structure as soon as possible so that we can see how it can work in practice. After the grant funding runs out, we can use this process ourselves to get paid! I would hope that we could onboard people to contribute financially and then we can allocate those moneyz to a community driven roadmap. It could be really nice!

❤️ 1

decentral1se added this to the (deleted) milestone 2021-06-19 09:12:21 +00:00

decentral1se added the

community organising

label 2021-06-19 09:12:21 +00:00

decentral1se referenced this issue

2021-06-19 09:21:14 +00:00

Community organising strategy? #79

decentral1se referenced this issue

2021-06-19 09:29:47 +00:00

Making clear what kind of work can be done in this project? #87

decentral1se commented

2021-06-19 09:34:04 +00:00

Open source infra work has been historically underfunded:

https://www.fordfoundation.org/media/2976/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure.pdf

Open source infra work has been historically underfunded: > https://www.fordfoundation.org/media/2976/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure.pdf

decentral1se added the

finance

label 2021-06-21 12:02:24 +00:00

decentral1se commented

2021-06-21 13:12:35 +00:00

Some positive thoughts around OC discussed in #internal.finance:

they are a worker co-op themselves
they facilitate money management for small self-organising groups
we could hook up our bank account and incur no operating costs

Some positive thoughts around OC discussed in `#internal.finance`: - they are a worker co-op themselves - they facilitate money management for small self-organising groups - we could hook up our bank account and incur no operating costs ![image](/attachments/d7ac6e00-1cdb-475a-8754-ce4ddf9055a6)

image.png

88 KiB

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decentral1se commented

2021-06-24 15:34:17 +00:00

We now have an OC account specifically for the project (see https://git.autonomic.zone/coop-cloud/organising/issues/98#issuecomment-6780 for more).

decentral1se referenced this issue from a commit

2021-07-02 13:54:09 +00:00

Add some initial paid contribution docs

decentral1se commented

2021-07-05 12:19:06 +00:00

WIP but good enough for now, I hope.