[Squeak-e] Market economies

[Tyler Close]

On Friday 31 January 2003 23:03, Robert Withers wrote:
> folks,
>
> I have an outrageous idea.  I'm wondering what you think of it.
>
> The real value of squeak is the community.  Since we are considering
> the possibilities of opening a hole can of worms, here, why don't we
> turn it up a notch.   Let's form a corporation and issue preferred
> stock to a bunch of people.   I am thinking the entire squeak and E
> communities should own stock.  We'll want to distribute it commensurate
> to 'contribution' somehow, but there is really no fair way, is there?
> So we'll have a vote.  And whatever the results, we'll abide by them.

I think monetizing the effort requires a closer alignment with the
'gift economy'.

I think the "Open Source Coordinator" for the project should mint
a new brand of erights. The coordinator can then set bounties on
the outstanding bugs and feature requests, payable in the new
brand of erights.

For example, you want some squeaker to translate my doc-code
implementation to Squeak. Decide how much that is worth to you,
relative to the rest of the e-squeak effort. Post a bounty for the
implementation, payable in e-squeak rights. Do the same for all
the tasks in your bug/feature tracker.

New projects can bootstrap themselves by initially offering
bounties payable in erights from a more popular project. Once the
new project reaches a critical mass of community support, it can
try to float its own brand of erights. The endless desire to start
new projects should create sufficient demand to support a liquid
market in old erights.

If people would be interested in using such a system, I would be
interested in building it.

Tyler