Per the concern about privilege. I work currently in a functioning cryptocurrency DAO that pays open-source contributors, for both code and non-code contributions. I found SourceCred in my search for a way to pay people that currently aren’t being paid (or are underpaid). In my project, the way it works is, to become a paid contributor, you need to contribute for free for a long period of time (typically 1-3 months), prove your worth to the community through accepted contributions, and then get voted in to the “guild” (they don’t call it that, but that’s essentially what it is). This path, of course, typically requires a lot of privilege – though the pay is low’ish and not based on geography, so it has repelled some devs working in expensive cities and attracted numerous developers from developing countries with lower cost of living (and presumably less privilege). When I proposed simply tracking contributor metrics, with the idea of paying people directly for contributions (whether they were members of the guild or not), the reaction from some influential core developers was swift and overwhelmingly negative, effectively killing the idea on the spot. These developers (which likely have the most privilege, wealth and autonomy in the community (they can work on pretty much whatever they want)) saw it as an effort to control them and take away their “sovereignty”. Apparently they’d had bad experiences with dev metrics at prior traditional jobs. I went back to the drawing board, and after some further research, realized maybe their fears had some merit. Dev metrics (and the gaming of them), have a bad reputation among the developer community for creating bad incentives and being abused by management. I’m now back to the drawing board. SourceCred looks promising, as I think it has the potential to create better, more defensible metrics. But I worry about another reactionary response. And wonder if it’s better to propose the idea early, allowing people to give feedback into customizing (and risk it being killed for good), or to work on the customization myself until I come up with something that is more fair and appealing. Also, wondering if there is any material on how to “sell” something like this to an org that may be resistant to it? Case studies?
Per the privilege question. I think that if the metrics are done right, they have the possibility to push the system in the direction of meritocracy (in practice, not just silicon valley mythmaking), lowering barriers to entry. This is particularly true if the system is permissionless and controlled by smart contracts. Existing contributors will start out with more cred. But if they want free, valuable labor they will have to send some of their cred to those new contributors, who have a path to more cred. Projects that don’t accept these free, valuable contributions (so they can hoard their cred) IMO will be at a major competitive disadvantage if DAOs gain traction (and I believe they will). Giving more cred (or better, money) to newer contributors is not only an altruistic way to level the playing field, it’s a good recruitment strategy (another competitive advantage). A larger problem, privilege-wise, is that non-code contributions (including a lot of emotional labor) are not tracked. That means that, even if we’re successful in leveling the playing field for developers, on the larger playing field, developers pull further ahead (and they’re already overcompensated as is). That SourceCred is integrating with this forum (e.g. this conversation may generate cred), is an encouraging development. I think there are many ways you could measure interaction on forums, slack channels, twitter, whatever. - Indeed tipping bots funding content are already being used to great financial success on twitter by crypto projects such DASH and Ripple.
Another unsolved problem is gaming the metrics. Aside from contributors gaming metrics, If the parameters that assign cred are in control of those with more privilege/capital, there will be an incentive to optimize those parameters for profit. Will that align with fair, meritocratic valuation of work? Or will it be massaged to extract value from those with less privilege? Some combination of both? I’m optimistic (and am a cynical veteran of the tech industry). But I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that historically, new technology has tended to increase income inequality. Money attracts money. Technology that values labor (especially permissionless labor) accurately could be an a great tool to fight back against that. But it’s not a forgone conclusion.