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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Miles Fidelman<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/27/19 12:49 PM, Matt Harris wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:32 AM Tom Beecher
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:beecher@beecher.cc"><beecher@beecher.cc></a> wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
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rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">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. <br>
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<div>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. </div>
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<div>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. </div>
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<div>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. </div>
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<div>Just my opinions, though. </div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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</pre>
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