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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/8/15 6:36 PM, Eric Moore wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:559D519F.8060209@fastmail.fm" type="cite">The
user co-op plan seems all about getting lots of regular income in
order to pay for staff. I can see the advantages, but that
fundamentally changes the community. It would set up a class
structure, and doesn't feel like a FOSS project anymore (even
though the software licensing would not change).
</blockquote>
I don't think hiring paid staff for an open source project
automatically gives the project a class structure. Before
Thunderbird was handed back to the community, Mozilla had staff
hired for Thunderbird too, and I never had the feeling that staff
and contributors were treated differently.<br>
<br>
The only class structure you might see is that staff will be
"treated" second class: they have to fix the bugs that no one wants
to take care of, catch up on annoying Mozilla Platform changes, etc.
The contributors get to do the fun stuff, implementing new features
in whatever area they like, abandoning half-finished patches because
they don't want to work on it any more, etc :-)<br>
<br>
Personally I think Thunderbird would only benefit from hired staff,
even just one developer would be a great improvement.<br>
<br>
Philipp<br>
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