Update #2 on “Stepping back”

Edit to add this set of links to the posts in the series

Well, this is quite something. In roughly 30 years of open source contributions I have never had a group I've worked with lie about what happened.

And yet here we are. To ensure there can be no doubt about what I am alleging, the content at Tusky Contributor response to Nik Clayton – Open Collective contains multiple serious lies. Some of these are lies by omission, others are outright falsehoods.

It is my responsibility to present evidence for that. The following posts, and linked documents, is that evidence.

I will clearly indicate the statements I think are lies. Anything else is a difference of opinion at best, misleading but probably not deliberately so at worst.

The “TL;DR” section

Policy for paying contributors

The response opens with this statement.

Our OpenCollective policy has always been that we will use our budget to enable contributors who would otherwise not be able to contribute.

This is a lie.

You may want that policy to exist. It's a fine policy to have. I agree with it.

But it doesn't exist in any tangible form.

  1. In public, there is no policy potential contributors can find. Maloki and Conny Duck committed to producing a policy, but never did
  2. In private, the team acknowledged there was no policy. There was a desire to create one, but at best there was a very incomplete draft the project had not adopted

No public policy for potential contributors

There is no contributor funding policy written down, or communicated to contributors or potential contributors anywhere.

If you don't write it down, or tell anyone, it's not a policy.

In particular, there is no documented path for someone who is interested in contributing to Tusky, but unable to do so for financial reasons, to discover they can apply to the project for funding.

I looked for evidence of this policy in the following places, none of which mention a contributor funding policy.

Maloki's first post when the OpenCollective for Tusky was opened is at We are setting up a way to support us! – Open Collective (2019-01-23) and promises:

While we allow you to start supporting us immediately, we will still discuss between us and work out what people can get reimbursed for, and what is an appropriate amount etc.

which is clear that although they intend for a policy to exist, no policy exists at that time.

Conny Duck's first post to the OpenCollective is at Thank you very much for your donations! – Open Collective (2019-02-11) promises:

There will be an update on how we plan to use the money soon.

which also suggests an intent for a policy, but no policy at that time.

There were then two updates announcing the release of Tusky 5.0 and the release of Tusky 6.0. Neither of those mention a contributor policy.

There were no updates until the Some changes going forward – Open Collective post on 2023-07-28, announcing Conny Duck stepping back immediately and Maloki stepping back at the end of the year.

Which brings us to today, and the post I am responding to. Which claims there is a policy, but doesn't provide any links to it.

Finally, if this policy actually existed, I would expect that it would be mentioned to new contributors when they were making their first PRs to the project.

I can't speak to anyone else's experience, but this did not happen when I was submitting my initial PRs to the project. No policy was presented, and no one asked if I needed funding to continue contributing.

For the last several months I was also the person reviewing and merging PRs from first-time contributors. No one from the project asked me to explain an expense policy to new contributors.

In private the team knows there is no policy

Earlier this year the project started having regular meetings.

The very first meeting on 2023-03-07 was chaired by Maloki. I was taking the minutes.

The agenda (posted by Maloki) was clear there was no policy:

  1. Open Collective, and funding in general.
    1. We're missing a payment policy.

Edit to add: This was on the agenda, but we ran out of time before discussing it.

The next meeting, 2023-05-09, was organised and chaired (as all remaining meetings where) by Andi.

The agenda included this item:

  1. Connyduck: Expense policy for Open Collective, Conny and Maloki have a draft.

and the minutes note:

Draft policy is https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/3/pad/view/60ad93fa9425cdcf36c3e8e3f953b257/

That file is probably not accessible to you. If the project acts with integrity they will agree to make it available.

In case they don't, I made a copy before I left, at https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/RsUJVNlYmFX-xw1zJgAJOr+8CIVnvAfTt66BGp6+Byc/, which should be available to you. That copy reflects the state of the file on 2023-08-27 at approximately 10pm CEST.

In case that is also not available to you I have placed a copy of the text at the bottom of this post.

The metadata for the original file shows that it was created on 2023-05-08 (i.e., the day before the contributor meeting), approximately four and a half years after Maloki and Conny Duck publicly promised there would be a policy on OpenCollective.

The “Goals” section in that document is explicit, saying “right now there is no official policy”.

I do not believe that document is the project's official policy at the time I left, for the following reasons:

  1. The filename and document title contain “In progress”
  2. The bottom of the document contains multiple open comments that have not been addressed
  3. The draft document contains content that, I think, can be read as violating the terms of the OpenCollective policy around hate and discrimination (https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/the-open-collective-way/community-guidelines#hate-and-discrimination)
  4. The draft document contains content (around the traceability of expenses) that I believe definitely violates the OpenCollective policies (as I have previously noted)
  5. After the meeting of 2023-05-09 where was no “We have finished drafting the expense policy, here it is, please provide feedback so we can adopt it and announce it” message from Maloki or Conny Duck.

There were two more meetings, 2023-06-15 and 2023-08-15. The expense policy was not on the agenda at either of those meetings.

I made those same points in what would turn out to be my last-but-one message to the contributors channel, which was visible to all the signatories of Tusky Contributor response to Nik Clayton – Open Collective except L.J and Lola, who may or may not have been shown it by the project, I have no way of knowing.

The very best I can say is:

  1. If you were interested in contributing to Tusky, but needed financial support to do so
  2. ... and you weren't put off by the lack of any public payment policy
  3. ... and you visited the project's OpenCollective page
  4. ... and you looked at the list of expenses the project had paid
  5. ... then you may have noticed some people were being paid for contributions

That may have prompted you to contact Maloki or Conny Duck directly to ask about how to get paid for work.

That is a lot of hoops for any potential contributor to jump through, especially given the dual stigmas around (a) asking for money in the first place, and (b) asking for money for open source.

So for all those reasons I am comfortable saying:

I've just written ~ 1,200 words to contradict 23. This is clearly going to need to be a series of posts rather than one. More later.

A copy of the content of https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/RsUJVNlYmFX-xw1zJgAJOr+8CIVnvAfTt66BGp6+Byc/ (original file titled “Payment policy (In progress)”)

Payment policy (In progress)

Goals:

Proposal:

We reimburse all costs necessary to keep the project running, e.g. servers and domains, and the ocassional merchandise drop to promote the project.

We also provide payment for work done on the Tusky project including, but not limited, to Coding, Codereview, Design and User support.

For a one-off contribution that is documented on GitHub, you can send us an invoice with a maximum of 100$ (needs 1 admin approval)

If you are a regular contributor, please reach out so we create an individual agreement. (needs 2 admin approval)

We encourage contributors to only request payments that are needed for them to contribute to the project. Contributors who receive a regular salary from another source should refrain from requesting payment for their work on the project.

comments:

I think a good limit is $500 per /person / month of work. (but like if you're like me and you take monye out once ever y 3 months, you still can go over.

“Payable work must be tracable”, is hard. Because I don't feel like most of my work is tracable.
Maybe we can say: tracable or otherwise agreed upon?

Not sure how to phrase something like this though, in regards to the “Contributors are encoruaged to only submit expenses if they would otherwise not be able to work on the project”: Our project works on a need over greed basis, that means if you need help to pay the rent a month we can pay for your contribution, but if you're just trying to get money out of us on top of a fulltime salary that's keeping you comfy maybe not.
I think that maybe the current phrasing is good, the one I quoted, but could be improved somehow.