Crowdfunding critical infrastructure

Thu Jun 27 16:56:20 UTC 2019

I think it would be a grand thing if someone put together a visible list 
of critical Internet infrastructure, who maintains it, and perhaps 
"click to support" buttons for those that need support.  Then again, 
such a list might present a wonderful target list for those who might 
want to do ill.

This also might be a great role for the Internet Systems Consortium.  
You know, the folks who maintain Bind, and already maintain a list of 
critical software maintained by ISC and others, along with a list of 
supporters, and a way to support some of the efforts.

Miles Fidelman

On 6/27/19 12:49 PM, Matt Harris wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:32 AM Tom Beecher <beecher at beecher.cc> wrote:
>
>         Encouraging folks to contribute to specific individuals
>         directly may be a little more difficult though, compared to,
>         say, getting a legitimate organization going that provides
>         (likely objectively-determined merit-based) payouts to the
>         sort of folks you're talking about.
>
>
>     Adding an organization in front of that whose sole reason for
>     existence is to decide who gets what % of the money doesn't make a
>     lot of sense, mostly because it is just creating another layer of
>     people who are then going to feel entitled to be compensated for
>     taking the time to decide who should be compensated.
>
>
> I don't think anyone needs to be compensated for that. I think that 
> you can certainly run a volunteer organization. The time required 
> would be minimal enough that normally-employed folks could participate 
> without issue in managing it. Having that tax deductible status, in 
> the US at least, would be a big benefit and would also bring in 
> institutional/corporate donors and the like as well. Non-profits have 
> been run for making infrastructure software before and have been at 
> least somewhat successful. ISC is an example of this. Something a bit 
> more decentralized could work just fine, too, imho.
>
> As far as just asking people to give to others at random, I think 
> you'll see less uptake and potentially issues with parity (for 
> example, if you add worthy folks to a list, those at the top of the 
> list will likely benefit more from random contributors just because 
> they select those at the top of the list - so how do you decide who 
> gets to be where on such a list?), and little if any interest from 
> institutional/corporate donors. A formal organization structure with 
> rules written down in public also helps to ensure transparency and if 
> you set objective, meritocratic rules for the disbursement of funds 
> and you keep things transparent around them, I think that would 
> attract a lot of contributions.
>
> Just my opinions, though.
>
-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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