[Squeak-e] Market economies

[Robert Withers]

Hey Tyler,

On Saturday, February 1, 2003, at 06:37 AM, Tyler Close wrote:

> 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'.

Do you have some references to 'gift economy'?  That is clearly an 
element of what I had in mind, but I wanted to go a step further and 
tie it to a real legal entity and give it measurable value.  I was 
thinking it should be like currencies that are based on either an 
underlying value standard (gold) or the credibility of the issuer and 
it's relation to other currencies.  My thinking was that initially we 
would want just one 'brand' until it becomes more established and has a 
definable value.  This is very new territory to me.

> 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.

I think the issuer should be the Squeak Foundation.  Is it possible for 
a non-profit organization to issue stock?  Does it have an ownership 
concept?

> 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.

I was thinking that this comes after an initial issuance.  Everyone 
involved should start out with ownership and voting rights, although 
the implications of that could be a bit hairy.  We should discuss it 
further if people think that this is an interesting direction.

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

I don't want to discourage you in the least.  Part of my thinking in 
building this in squeak would be that it would provide a good impetus 
for building a system to support it.   Damned manipulative of me isn't 
it?  :)

If there is any possibility, that we can't address, of this suggestion 
derailing the effort to produce such a system, then I will want to call 
it off.  This suggestion is not meant to detract from why we all 
gathered here in the first place.

That we have gathered into a list is the most important and really 
amazing thing that we have all done this month.  We have a new mailing 
list, with over 20 participants, less than 24 hours into it, for the 
purpose of building a SafeSqueak.  I am completely blown away.  :-)

So who is going to start the real conversation?  Guys, how can we do 
exceptions with only lexical scoping?  Or do we need to have privileged 
dynamic scoping?

Here is a description of what we most definitely cannot give up in 
SafeSqueak:  http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2950 .

cheers,
rob