On Monday, the 26. of October 2020, I read in the newspaper an article about a tool, which distributes donations to open source workers. The salary is paid out via cryptocurrency.
I thought "Hey, this is very similar to our project 'Charity on Hive'", so I tried to contact Tobias Augspurger, the speaker of Protontypes, which created LibreSelery.
Yesterday, I had an 1.5 hour discussion with him:
What is LibreSelery
The Tool
LibreSelery is a tool, which can be cloned from Github.
It is platform independent, as it runs in a docker environment.
One can configure the recipients (whitelist) and the settings for distributing the cryptocurrency. After configuring is set, a command is executed and the money is distributed.
The Project Leaders
The leaders of Open Source projects can install this tool in their local (or cloud) environment, configure it and run it once or regularly. So they take money from their budget pot and give it to the workers. They can publish a central donation address for the supporters to fill the budget pot.
I.e. if you want to support LibreSelery, you can send Bitcoin to: https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/wiki/Donation
Then this money is automatecally distributed amoung the LibreSelery workers.
The Developers
The developers should register at coinbase.com and on Github.com
On coinbase, they insert a public email address. Now they can send and get cryptocurrency via emailaddresses:
The Measurement Of Workload (who shall get how much?)
In Github there are several ways and metrics to see how much a developer contributes to a project. With executing the pull requests, the project leader can estimate the value of a worker. This can be used for the distribution setting in the config file.
Example taken from github
Who are the creators of LibreSelery?
LibreSelery is a tool which was created by the community Protontypes
protontypes is a free community for the acceleration of open projects, business models, technologies and platforms. We create tools for the financing, marketing, and development of liberated innovations. Our community is open to everyone who believes in the innovative power of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants.
Our aim is to accelerate open and independent innovation with a sustainable impact.
Especially in the development of an low-carbon economy, we need to be fast and efficient. By spreading knowledge in this domain with open software, design, standards, tools, and platforms a sustainable economy can be reached in a short timespan.
Protontypes has i.e. a huge consolidated a list of sustainable Open Source projects
What is the difference between LibreSelery, Hive and Chary?
LibreSelery
LibreSelery has the distribution Logic on the user level. It is in the hand of the project owners. No dive into deep technical layers (as Hive-Engine) is needed. Nevertheless a crypto account on coinbase is needed. Discussions and payout are separated.
Hive
With Hive one can also pay out workers, but a distribution mechanism has to be created. If you want to pay out some people, you need to know and make it transparent, how you do it. I.e. you can pump up one payout-account, that gives big upvotes. But then the distribution key is in-transparent (You often don't know, why you get 17% upvotes and others 82%) and in the hand of one person. And you need a lot of staked Hive.
Or you send HIVE directly to people, but this is also a lot of manual and in-transparent work.
Chary (or other Hive-sub-token)
With Chary the distribution logic is the charity-community. Their upvotes decide how much a worker shall get relative to others. People can discuss in public, who is worthy to get support.
Chary has to be "filled up with value (USD, EUR,...)" by supporters via Hive-Engine.
One problem with this is (also in Hive): "The devil shits on the biggest heap"- which means, only few people get the attention (and big rewards) and the rest nearly nothing.
One other problem with Chary is, that the workers need to exchange twice (Hive-Engine and crypto exchange), to get their local money.
Conclusion
LibreSelery is a total new way to pay out developers. It is relative easy to use for the participants. It helps to distribute money to decentral managed groups of developers. It works different than Hive (or Chary) and uses the blockchain only as a paying method.
I see a big potential in this paying method and a chance to go new decentral ways. LibreSelery helps us to get independent from big companies. It is one piece in the puzzle of the vision to a better and fairer world.
Achim Mertens
Thanks you sir for sharing your reviews on LibreSelery. I love how it works because it makes it easier for newbies to contribute to the blockchain environment and get rewarded with less hassles. One thing about their payment gateway Coinbase is that it is limited (Only for US citizens) if they can integrate payment gateways that support lot of countries, that will be more preferable by a lot of people, I know this will be done eventually. I love the App and will learn more about it.