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[Joel Peshkin]

Gervase Markham wrote:

>
> If we need cash for something, let's have a PayPal (or similar) 
> account, plug it on the website, and also start responding to those 
> requests with a polite pointer at the URL.
>
That works well for some potential donors.  For others, using 
cafepress.com to sell items like a Bugzilla CD for $50 would be a good 
way. Many corporations make it extremely complicated (read not worth it) 
to get a donation made, but will let a department order a $50 CD (as a 
thinly masked donation) just like any other petty item.  I had a devil 
of a time getting my company to figure out the mechanics of how to pay 
to register  CoolEdit back in the days when Syntrillium was harder to 
give money to.  When we started making heavy use of VNC, I just had my 
secretary order a few copies on CD. Our purchasing department never even 
knew they were doing something other than buying software.

> But, as Myk says, what do we need cash for? Are we trying to do a Perl 
> and hire a developer?
>
Ideally, yes.  More likely, it would let us contract one for a few 
months at a pop.  There is a lot of work that needs to be done for the 
common good (like customfields, a complete email rewrite, etc...) that 
nobody wants to volunteer to do.  What triggeed the current discussion 
was the inability to even get 2.18 release blockers reviewed.

The other related discussion point, while we are at it, is encouraging 
new contributors to take on tasks that need doing and/or encouraging 
commercial users to actually sponsor the work they want to see done.   
We probably should add a page on Bugzilla.org that suggests projects 
that a new contributor could actually attempt and have a prayer of 
landing and in which the team has sufficient interest that we would be 
willing to mentor somone.   In a related fashion, there are features 
that people want and nobody wants to write.  We could have an actual 
mechanism to encourage them to fund the development of their own pet 
features rather than whining in the bugs about how nobody has chosen to 
do it for them.

When I need a feature, I write it or have a contractor working for me 
write it.  Not everyone is going to do this.  Some companies would be 
willing to write a check to have someone else (like some of the team 
members who also consult) write it.  We should be encouraging this and 
helping them find QUALIFIED people to work with them. (That's a mixed 
bag on the current list)

-Joel