Ubuntu Touch DAO?

Babber

I am not aware of anything like this, and so I thought it might be worth to pop up the idea of a DAO for our community. IMHO it would be great to have a platform where specific features for UT would get listed by the community maybe even with a price tag(?), where we can donate for our favorite features that we miss, and some can say that I take this project for the sum, and then get paid on the delivery of the source code of an MVP at least from where the community can take it further. (This is just the rough idea to start somewhere.) This would need some curation of course, but it could all work within a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), which is meant to facilitate exactly this sort of co-operation. A DAO on Ethereum or on Cardano (see e.g. the Summon Platform, which is just an example that I don't know first hand)? See also the DAOhaus. I think, people donate more if they have a bit of say on what exactly their money is spent on, so this would probably help to raise more money for Ubuntu Touch in general. Donors wouldn't need to be members of the DAO, but could be if they wanted. I don't mean to replace the current solution, only to complement it. What could we loose? I think, with a DAO, we can only win: more involvement, more democracy, more transparency, more money, more work on more features, more adoption. Or am I missing something? Ideas?

Babber

I have just found this thread on a similar idea.

A few things I'd like to add as a response to that.

What I mean is no ICO, this DAO's governance tokens would only serve for voting on proposals, not for speculation.
Donors wouldn't necessarily need to do anything else but pick their favorite project and pay in Euro or in whichever currency you choose to accept.
The DAO membership could also be invite-only. In this case, for the wider community, it would only mean transparency and a practical way of channeling their donations toward their favorite projects. Already this would bring a lot of benefits, including more funding.
An obvious example for a DAO is exactly to channel donations toward specific objectives: "A charity – you could accept donations from anyone in the world and vote on which causes to fund." In this case however, the donors, who are not members as well, cannot decide on what to fund. Alternatively, the DAO would only curate the list of features that the users can donate for: what gets on the list, specs of the product, needed funding, criteria for payments, etc...
In the referenced thread, I have read: "Legal and real is what gears the foundation." DAOs and crypto in general are certainly real and this is being recognized by the EU as well. The legal status of the DAOs is not quite yet settled, but this is only a matter of time. However, if there is no profit-making involved in the DAO, people are not investing for something in return, then it is hard to imagine that this would be something very difficult to set up in a legal way. See for example this recent publication where also Germany in mentioned: "When the law in force is examined, one of the fitting ways for DAOs to be established in Germany is by being classified as a GbR (Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts). The establishment procedure of a GbR is quick, easy, and cheap." Since crypto and DAOs in Europe as well have a large and growing community, I would simply contact them for advise about the legal aspects of philanthropic DAOs in Germany. See also the Berlin-based IOTA Fundation's blog posts on DAOs: https://blog.iota.org/tag/dao/. I am sure they would be happy to help.

At the end of the day, you can also consider this as two independent suggestions:

a DAO for making the development of the project more democratic and transparent; and
creating a platform, where people can donate for specific features that they miss from UT.
Then these two could potentially mold if it is beneficial for the project and there are no prohibiting legal obstacles. I think one should look at working examples of charity DAOs to see what makes sense.

Moem

I would worry that it would lead to a sense of entitlement: I imagine people saying things like "I donated €€€ for feature such-and-such, and it's still not available one full year later, what's up with that?"

Also, where would the money go to? We're mostly a volunteer project.

Babber

This post is deleted!

Babber

@Moem If it's a DAO, it would also establish a framework on when to pay to whom for what, etc. There are many possible options here, but for example, if you buy governance tokens with your donation, you can vote with these, and if the project you voted for gets founded, you cannot complain. If the developer who sings up doesn't deliver anything, won't get paid, so you also cannot complain. Exactly the DAO would establish the kind of transparency, where you would know exactly "what's up with that", and you would also know that there's nobody to blame, for the whole thing being decentralized.

Where the money would go? To the devs who would sign up for the coding of the selected features and who are happy to work on it, but otherwise cannot afford to work for free. This could open up the development to a whole new group of people. What I love about Ubuntu is that it's an open ecosystem, but I really don't expect that everything is developed for free. Founded development could complement the work of the volunteers. Some donate their work and others donate money for someone else to do the work, I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. Important is to keep the ecosystem open.

Lakotaubp

@Babber As a charitable Foundation we cannot sell or issue anything that could look like it is for a saleable purpose.. It is against our rules of enrolment with the German Government.

Babber

@Lakotaubp I am not quite sure what you mean with "saleable purpose". It should be made clear at the sale that these tokens cannot be sold, they are not good for anything else other than voting. All the money that comes in from the sale of these tokens would be spent on the project that is the object of the charity, so I see no fundamental conflict between this scheme and the concept of a charity. Otherwise I don't know what is the current regulation for charitable DAOs in Germany, this is why I suggested asking the IOTA Foundation, since they are Germany based and experts in DAOs.

PS. I will edit now my previous post on how I imagine the use of these tokens to complete their circle.

Babber

Since I was too late to edit a previous post of mine, I deleted it and posted anew below with a more complete scheme for the token circulation.

For the sake of a concise example, it could also work like this (provided that there are no legal obstacles):

the Foundation would issue and sell tokens at a fixed price (e.g. 1 token for 1€);
all the income would go to a dedicated Treasury;
a specific list a projects would be founded from this Treasury and all the money in the Treasury could be spent only on these;
token holders would vote on proposals on what to found and with how much (voting power is proportional with the number of tokens they hold);
if a proposal wins funding, its price in token terms should be shared by those who voted for it proportional to their voting power;
these tokens spent on the winner project would go back to the Foundation so that it can sell them again for more funding in the Treasury. This would enable to keep a more or less constant sum in the Treasury for new incoming projects.

All this could be more or less independent of and parallel to the current operation of the foundation. This could be an additional source of revenue, a democratic and transparent involvement of the community in the development.

Lakotaubp

@Babber Saleable purpose means anything that looks like it is for, can be or has the intention of being exchanged in anyway for sale, monetary gain or benefit. UBports is a Charitable Foundation, Ubuntu Touch is the OS to be 100% clear.

Babber

@Lakotaubp Thanks, I know which one is the Foundation and which one is the OS. Sorry if I used these interchangeably or in a wrong context.

You can sell mugs and pens on https://ubports.com/en/shop (which actually have a free market price) but you cannot "sell" (give in exchange of a donation) tokens that have no other value than a voting ballot? Alright, I won't push this further.

Could you then maybe just set up a website with a list a popular features with a donate button and a progress bar indicating how much donation got collected for the given feature? And maybe how much is missing to start working on it? With some instructions on how to propose a project, etc?.. This would still mean a lot financially and with respect to the engagement of the community.

kugiigi

I'm not familiar with DAO and honestly didn't read the full conversation, but I once experienced a minor participation in a bounty for a feature implementation in one of the core apps. Not sure which platform was used but we did get the money and it was actually surprisingly quite big

Babber

@kugiigi That is nice to hear! It's a success story then!
Yeah, I think if there is willingness to pay for new features and accelerated development, and I do think there is willingness here, then financial incentives can motivate all parties to more engagement. Users don't feel that lost and powerless regarding the evolution of their favorite mobile OS, and freelance developers can pick and choose from interesting and paid jobs. It seems to me a win-win!