Add Rust Foundation Maintainer Fund exploration document #1
Conversation
design-docs/exploration.md
Outdated
|
|
||
| The Rust Foundation is willing to contract to small companies (such as a limited liability company) that are set up by the maintainer themselves, so that the maintainer can make full-time contracting legal in their country (when applicable). | ||
|
|
||
| Ideally, the Foundation wants to have a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries might also be problematic in case the Foundation was audited. That being said, if all the other options fail, the Foundation will attempt to make this work, but it must be a last resort and definitely not the first option for anyone. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
What does it mean for it to be "a last resort" and "definitely not the first option of anyone"? And for the other options to fail? Does saying "I do definitely not want to waste all my time and some money engaging with the legal process for this so I will not even start" count as failing? Or what would happen in this case?
There was a problem hiding this comment.
And what does the thing about being "audited" mean? It's not illegal to do this, so what? Would it be extra effort for the foundation to deal with it? Then sure, saying that the maintainers own company is preferred if it exists makes a lot of sense, but saying that it must be attempted is terrible imo as it forces contributors though the legal processes, while the contributors should be working on Rust instead!
There was a problem hiding this comment.
I would propose to take this out, especially the last sentence, as it veers much more toward "prescribing an option" rather than "laying out the space of possibilities", which is supposed to be the goal of this doc.
At most it should say this using more neutral framing, e.g.
The Foundation prefers to have a direct relationship with maintainers for full visibility into where the money is going.
But let's make it clear that we aren't ruling out the possibility outright.
There was a problem hiding this comment.
as it veers much more toward "prescribing an option" rather than "laying out the space of possibilities"
I'd like to clarify some things here. The document is supposed to enumerate all reasonable options that we thought of. But at the same time, it should also make it clear which of those options are even feasible, given the constraints of this specific Fund (we are creating a design for RFMF, not just any fund, and RFMF will likely have some constraints).
The document clearly enumerates employment as a possible option, so I think that has been satisfied. It also says that employment might not be an option in RFMF, and that's where it goes into the FAQ to explain why, which is indeed prescribing the set of feasible options, or why they might be infeasible, but I think that we should make that clear.
That being said, the answer to the last two questions in the FAQ is still "in the works". So once we know more from the Foundation, we will update the docs to reflect the latest state.
I can add a big "WIP" to the last two FAQ items, if you think that's helpful :)
There was a problem hiding this comment.
WIP might help. I'm focusing on the possibility of employment through a third party. It isn't clear from the FAQ if this is off the table yet, and it seems early to introduce hard constraints. Perhaps the way to see it is that the foundation has expressed a strong preference against that that we should work to understand.
As a concrete suggestion:
| Ideally, the Foundation wants to have a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries might also be problematic in case the Foundation was audited. That being said, if all the other options fail, the Foundation will attempt to make this work, but it must be a last resort and definitely not the first option for anyone. | |
| Any fund taking money from the Foundation must make sure to understand and accommodate its constraints, legal or otherwise. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries can create legal and auditing risks for them. They have also expressed a strong preference for having a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. |
Co-authored-by: Tyler Mandry <[email protected]>
design-docs/exploration.md
Outdated
| - Does not provide as much stability to the maintainer as employment in terms of long-term support. | ||
| - Does not offer the same benefits as employment (health insurance, vacations, 401k, mortgage, visas, etc.). | ||
| - In some countries (e.g. Germany or France), full-time/single-source contracting is a legal gray zone that is close to being outright illegal. | ||
| - It might require the maintainer to set up a "personal company" (e.g. a limited liability company), along with all the taxes and legal work that comes with it. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
To my knowledge this is insufficient, at least in Germany, I remember looking this up in more detail when I started to work on Rust full-time. Having an GmbH only makes it less likely to be an issue, but doesn't fully protect you from the threat of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinselbst%C3%A4ndigkeit#Kriterien for the conditions here
The conditions for Scheinselbstständigkeit are intentionally vague and open to interpretation to prevent companies from working around them.
Any full-time contract with the foundation will be
- a single source of income
- a fixed (hourly) pay
- contract was setup with very limited negotiation by the contractor
- contractor won't have any employees themself
- contractor won't look for alternative sources of income
I am not a legal expert and can't judge how likely it is that this will be enforced, but I very much believe there is no way to provide certainty that it will not be.
As in, I would make it more explicit that single source contracting is a bad idea:tm: regardless of what you do in germany and setting up an LLC doesn't avoid these issues
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Thanks, clarified. Feel free to suggest edits!
|
|
||
| The Rust Foundation is willing to contract to small companies (such as a limited liability company) that are set up by the maintainer themselves, so that the maintainer can make full-time contracting legal in their country (when applicable). | ||
|
|
||
| Any fund taking money from the Foundation must make sure to understand and accommodate its constraints, legal or otherwise. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries can create legal and auditing risks for them. They have also expressed a strong preference for having a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
What does "Any fund taking money from the Foundation" mean?
Similar, who is the "them" in "Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries can create legal and auditing risks for them"
I think it's a different "them" from the first use in the next sentence "They have also expressed a strong preference for having a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries".
Is the following parse correct, if so, we can use that one?
| Any fund taking money from the Foundation must make sure to understand and accommodate its constraints, legal or otherwise. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries can create legal and auditing risks for them. They have also expressed a strong preference for having a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to them, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. | |
| Any entity taking money from the Foundation must make sure to understand and accommodate its constraints, legal or otherwise. Transferring the funds through third-party intermediaries can create legal and auditing risks for that entity. The foundation have also expressed a strong preference for having a direct relationship with the maintainer, to ensure that the paid money will go (in full) to the maintainer, without management overheads taken by third-party intermediaries. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
I think that the first them is the Foundation itself. Bec/Lori should come up with more clarifications next week.
6 participants
This PR adds an exploration document for the Rust Foundation Maintainer Fund. It does not propose any specific design for the Fund. Rather, it enumerates the questions that we will have to eventually answer to make the Fund work, and some of possible answers and their trade-offs.
Note that we try to document all variants that seem reasonable and that fulfill the constraints of the Fund (see the document for more information). We want to document that we have considered something, even if it will not be used in the final design for the Fund.
We invite Rust Project Members (and of course also anyone else) to provide their feedback on this document. In particular, if there are any questions/considerations/answers/trade-offs missing, or if you have a question or a clarification, either ask here or on Zulip here. We want to keep the FAQ section of the document comprehensive and updated, so that if you read the document and have a question, ideally you should find its answer in the FAQ, or the answer should be clarified in the document directly.
The document is intended to be a living document that will be updated continuously, I will leave this PR open for some time to gather comments, and once the discussions settle down, I will merge it and then people will be able to propose changes normally through PRs and issues.
After we enumerate all possible and reasonable options in this document and gather feedback and inputs from Project members and other stakeholders, the RFMF design subcommittee will work on preparing an RFC for how the Fund should work.
Rendered