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in reply to Want a million dollars?

People would much more eagerly contribute if the money was assigned to a worthy case (like The Perl Foundation?).

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Re^2: Want a million dollars?
by kwaping (Priest) on Oct 03, 2006 at 16:44 UTC
    That's a great idea! Once we have the core team together, we can vote on where the money goes. Either that, or each member individually can decide where their share goes, if we decide to split the money.

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    It's all fine and dandy until someone has to look at the code.

      If you want people to sign up, I'd strongly recommend splitting the money up (note - how do you split "fairly"?) and then having the individuals decide where to contribute the cash.

      If I wanted to sign on and donate my $25,000 in winnings (or whatever) to the Perl Foundation, then good for me! If I want to be greedy and pocket the $25,000, then good for me! My point is that if someone is participating with the goal of winning mad cash (and, realistically, whats the harm in that?), then they wouldn't sign up for a team where they're guaranteed to get nothing other than warm fuzzies. They'll go off and join another team where they can actually bank their winnings and you'll be down a contributor.

      And, assuming you're going with the "split up the funds" approach, flesh out how the winnings will be divvied out now. Yes, yes, I know that this is masturbatory fantasizing about your lottery winnings, but if the team does win, it's invaluable. What if I sign up for the team and then contribute nothing. Do I still get a share? What if I submit a few small patches or optimizations, but nothing necessary. Do I still get a share? Do I get as big a share as the guy who designed most of the infrastructure? Does he get as big a share as the 3 guys on IRC who actually created the algorithm?

      Don't get me wrong - I like the "even split" approach and I think it'll cause the fewest headaches, but there would also have to be some sort of criteria to be met before you get a share, beyond just signing up.

      I know we're all brothers and sing and dance together as one, but plunk a million bucks into the middle of it, and all sorts of problems will pop up. I'm also not lobbying against setting up a team here, just rattling off the secretarial things that are important. Remember - this is quite a bit different from just getting 6 of your friends together on a team. For an intents and purposes, the vast majority of us on here are strangers. So lay down the ground rules before you offer to share a million bucks with people you don't know.

        I will clarify my thoughts on winnings. My initial idea is to evenly distribute the prize money among contributing team members, post-tax. I define "contributing" as submitting code that moves us towards the goal, or designing specs that are used for the project. I think different-size winnings based on perceived worth is a recipe for disaster. Of course, if someone wants to donate part of their winnings to someone else who did more work, that's well within their rights.

        Once we have more of a team put together, we will decide as a group if we're going to go with this method of splitting the winnings or some other method. I'm not a dictator and have no desire to be. I'm just getting the ball rolling.

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        It's all fine and dandy until someone has to look at the code.
      how about saying, e.g. a third of the money goes to the perl foundation, and the rest is splitted up between contributors?