Create policy doc for in what ways we can transact with vendors #15
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cc: @AppEnlight |
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Just realized that the suggestions in that IRC convo (ie. that we "pay" companies for services via gittip) may be fraught with peril in terms of tax law. From reading through Canadian tax law, accepting money through gittip when services are actually rendered may open up concerns. Even if they just give it away on the platform, lawyers for "real" companies might be disincentivized from giving the thumbs up to working with us. Compare this to in-kind gifts, which they're already accustomed to providing as a business and public relations tool. Of course, perhaps we could accept the in-kind support, and have it be part of our modus operandus that we provide a flat stipend to any supporting vendors to get them started, ensuring that all our supporters are taking time to actually exercise the platform. (ie. the expectation is that if we accept support, we expect the supporter to use the platform) Anyhow, just raising the spectre of concern for the territory we're entering. Real tax advice might solve this: gratipay/gratipay.com#96 cc: @ribasushi |
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Just got off a call with @m3matta from @PagerDuty: Mark made me realize another way in which accepting offers of support is not at odds with acting like a "real [non-open] company". In traditional companies, these relationships are simply called partnerships. For example, at @myplanetdigital (a webdev/UX shop), we were partnered with a company called Acquia, which offered enterprise Drupal site-hosting. When customers would go to Acquia looking for a website, Acquia obviously wouldn't build the site themselves. They would send them our way and literally do some of the legwork of closing the deal -- like flying to meetings, helping write proposals, etc, etc. This was standard fare, as they stood to benefit from a long-running enterprise hosting customer. It was clearly a situation where both parties benefitted, so no one at Myplanet pondered why Acquia would be giving us handouts. Gittip's partnering with various service provider would be exactly what any "real", self-sustaining company would do -- money does not need to change hands in order for there to be a legitimate value exchange. This mutualism should not be conflated with "asking for handouts". The main thing that we can offer them is literally just the acceptance of the support that they would like to provide. The thing they benefit from is the positive image of helping a project that, for whatever reason, they see benefit in aligning with. And if we truly believe that they provide a great product, this is nothing to be ashamed of, right? Companies have whole departments dedicated to forming partnerships. This isn't a department looking for "free stuff", but a department honed in on recognizing potential relationships where both parties benefit without money changing hands. It's a different sort of economy that we should consider carefully before eschewing, imho :) Anyhow, waiting to hear back from @m3matta on whether they can actually work with us in the way we've proposed (ie. us providing them funds via Gittip for them to start distributing on the platform). It may be the case that they can, in which case the above commentary is moot. But regardless, I sure feel we're making support of the Gittip platform very foreign and difficult for service providers if we take that route. ❤️ |
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In general I agree that we shouldn't shy away from accepting services for "free". We're still their customer. They wouldn't provide their service to us for free if the didn't directly or indirectly see that as a valuable thing to do. |
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Go-round over on IRC. |
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@patcon Thanks for reaching out to Pagerduty and having that call. That's really the first time someone besides me has done an open call on Gittip's behalf, and I loved watching it! You did great! 💃 |
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We definitely want to do partnerships, both upstream and downstream. Our product overview actually mentions this:
That's referring to downstream partnerships, wherein a company with a content platform of one kind or another has users who are also Gittip users and wants to make integration easy for them (our shared customers). We really should have an About page for this, but examples so far include Thoughtstreams, Julython, and, I suppose, Fontawesome. The best example of an upstream partner is, of course, Balanced. They've given us two or three significant chunks of code (137, 2036, and 2053). We've provided exposure (for 137 we were doing really well on Hacker News when they were first getting going as Balanced after rebranding, and for 2036/2053 we were an obvious candidate for a bitcoin-related push). We have a close relationship, yes, with Balanced practicing "engineering as marketing." And yet we pay their fees just like everyone else (though our bank payouts are grandfathered for now). In fact, Balanced is our single biggest operating expense: over $450/wk right now, compared to ~$75/wk for all other vendors combined. Service-oriented relationships like what we've got with Balanced, and what it sounds like MyPlanet has with Acquia, are different than product-oriented relationships. We don't want to run Gittip on swag. That is, we don't want to build our business on free product that's coming from someone's marketing budget or open source program office. As I said on IRC, if someone believes in our work, they can give to us on Gittip like everyone else. That way a) we can spend the money how we see fit, and b) we can directly grow Gittip in the process. We're not opposed to developing close service-oriented relationships with upstream vendors such as Balanced, but those are few and far between. And, we'd love to partner with downstream services to add Gittip integration into their product. |
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But this issue is about how we transact with vendors. I think our policy is:
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@whit537 and I had a really productive (albeit long) conversation where, as far as I'm concerned, we came to a totally satisfactory "working compromise" (I've never found that term so useful :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpPpLfJci7w (sorry, no idea where to deeplink for a fair representation) So you don't need to watch: from my point of view, I see the logic in @whit537's position, but I'm more eager to bend a bit more on a principle to serve a perceived purpose -- getting the best tools into the hands of the team in a fashion that maximizes human contentment. Specifically, my preference would be to accept a free service, as doing otherwise would effectively divert funds from the team and its members, who perhaps would get more bang per unit buck. So to clarify, I disagree with @whit537's position, but we both feel the most important thing is to move forward, as this is a disagreement that goes away as we scale and money becomes less of a concern for Gittip the company :) ❤️ EDIT: Tweaked wording because it seemed an unfair characterization on my part. |
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Alright, so I just realized that I never mentioned this in a public channel -- SHAAAAAAME @patcon -- but @m3matta previously gave us a discount code for 10% off a PagerDuty account for when we had time to re-activate it (which was ridiculously nice of him). But apparently Mark started some conversations at PagerDuty, and out of the blue, I received this email yesterday (which I've forwarded to support@gittip.com):
How do we feel about this? Does it change anything? It would seem to be a no-strings-attached offer of support. cc: @whit537 |
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We decided to compromise on this one and go with the 10% discount code (though it turns out it's actually 20%). IRC Thanks, @PagerDuty! :-) |
IRC convo started here: https://botbot.me/freenode/gittip/msg/11414007/
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