Anonymously, with no strings attached.
The Awesome Fund, the same thing.
I don’t know, but it’s really similar. Our New York workshop was, I think, also Awesome-funded.
Sure.
Like 10 US dollars every month.
That’s right.
OCF was set up so that each community doesn’t have to hire an accountant by itself.
"Vote Taiwan?" ( https://councils.g0v.tw/ )
Yeah, it’s called Vote Taiwan now, because they got the money from branding. The visual design and the branding is part of that brand.
It’s a very diverse organization, but it’s definitely not pro-DPP. I can say that.
It’s got Fan Chou in it, so there’s some original thinking. [laughs]
I wouldn’t say it’s partisan, but of course, it’s not the usual acquaintances of human right groups, of course.
It’s pretty good. It’s accountability in itself.
Before MG brought it up, yeah.
That’s right. That’s the grant, the g0v grant. They can come from any resource but the government.
I don’t know. Does III contribute to Jothon? I don’t think so.
At the moment, vTaiwan is supported by the space, but it’s not III money. It is science and technology. It’s BOST-allocated money is equally applied, if you are a civic tech group that identify one of the sustainable goals that you’re working on, you get access to use this venue for free.
It’s not like everybody else has to pay... vTaiwan gets it for free, but everybody else gets it for free too.
Contribution of time, of course. That is always appreciated.
That’s what a lot of g0v, like the labor law calculator, goes. The Ministry of Labor just...
Just bought it, really, yeah.
I think the community is not against prize money. Unlike grant, sometimes people go to those hackathons that has prize attached to it. People are generally fine with that, but it’s definitely not seen as a steady income. It is just some event that you go to.
Hold things together.
That’s really good to hear.
That’s what the B corps people, that’s what the Yunus System, that’s what the social enterprise people has been focusing on for the past 10 years, is how to align financial incentives with social environmental ones.
Like Mozilla. Mozilla Corporation is running pretty well. It’s a social enterprise. It says that on its homepage...
No, not at all.
The thing with MoeDict is that it never required financial resources.
Yeah, it’s like literally zero cost.
Sure, but it’s all just time, right? There’s nothing that need to be bought.
No, but during a project’s bootstrap era, in all open source communities it’s like that. It’s basically one or two people putting in lots in time before it proves to be valuable to other people. Then it starts to develop a model for governance and money or whatever.
I do agree. The blockchain people are totally reinventing that. That’s what we’re seeing, is basically a new generation that’s not satisfied with databased governance as the previous generation of civic tech people do.
The previous generation of civic tech people is almost all centered around data-based normativity. Now, with blockchain governance, it’s about code too. We are seeing a change, because the blockchain people are very good a design long-term incentives to keep people engaged.
I think that is great. It basically liberates the mathematicians to be financially independent, and also help other people to be financially independent.
I don’t feel at all attached to money. All the innovations I care about, money cannot buy, so it’s useless instrument.
That’s exactly right.
At the moment, these people pay taxes to pay me.
That was 20 years ago. More than 20 years ago, actually.
I never really had any much savings. I don’t feel attached to money. That’s the simple fact.
I don’t have to care about it ever since I was 15. If I need money that month, I take some coding gigs, and I’m done with that. Basically, I participate in the gig economy early as I was 15. I basically just earn whatever I need for that month, and I’m done. It’s usually just a week or less, and then all my time is free.
I’m not saying that it applies to everyone. We, the people who started when free software forked off into open source, is very privileged. Such people are in very short supply anywhere that can speak the language of free software and hacker culture, but is also willing to engage with people economically.
That gives us the privilege of being activist, but also pay very well for our knowledge. Then of course, it creates schism in the free software open source communities, especially in the US. Not so much in Taiwan, but then it kind of merged back.
Then the open source people got pretty successful, and then they are now saying, “OK, now, the human rights, freedoms are most important.” Then they kind of merged back, especially in the past few years.
No.
No, they join if they want to join.
I think I try to create a friendly environment for people to join, but I don’t try to convince particular individuals to join. I think it’s easier that way, if I don’t tailor-make the environment to particular innovators, things that make everybody feel welcome.
That’s my view, and I’m not trying to impose it on you. That’s my view.
Yeah, I think the relationships are alive, and we are just the vessels that it inhabits. That’s one of the crazy things I said to Liz.
To Liz Barry. We are just the vessels of which the relationships, which are the real life-forms, habits.
