Pre-work musings .'.

I am currently involved in a couple of communal projects that could, for want of better words, be described as "startups." We have no funding, everyone is effectively working for free, but there is the intention of money on the horizon - this introduces questions as to how people get paid at the end (if we get there).
If project funding already existed, it'd just be a matter of logging our hours and trusting that everyone was logging appropriately (ie. only logging time where they were truly working), paying them accordingly, maybe setting an upper limit to paid hours per week, etc..
As it is though, the projects currently move more like "open source" development, in that people do a bit here and there, when they feel like it... some people feel like it more often than others, and so it probably isn't "fair" to split up the winnings equally at the end. Also, we've recently run into the question of outsourcing, again not a problem in standard development - but when there's no budget to draw from, and you can't assume that people will be as happy as you are to work on your little project for free, you have to find some happy alternative.

Disjointed preambles and disclaimers aside, I was considering the possibility of a "peer reviewed, infinite share" system. Rather than people logging hours as they work, or just plain old arguing about "fair amounts" of the final income, people post a review of the work they've completed (ie. "I worked for two hours, fixed , added ") and the group vote on the appropriate/proposed share value of that work. Shares could effectively be thought of as representing "hours of work" but in the more abstract sense that, even if it took you five hours, if it's only really two hours of work, then you'd get two shares (or if everyone is in a grumpy mood, none ;-P) (note: actually, shares would have to have a lower value than that, to allow for variable rates of pay: neatening up the wiki would, for example be paid at a lower rate than say, programming or art)

Obviously, this (like any) approach will have it's shortcomings, and (like any) relies on level-headed judgements, but it allows people to "earn" in a moneyless environment, and probably will reduce the risk of argument later on in the game.

As with any "share" oriented system, there is still risk, outsourced work is still, to some extent, faith-based in that people are paid in shares and "hope" that said shares are eventually worth something. But really, what monetary system doesn't operate like this?

Sorry for this boring tripe, but hey - it's _my_ blog :)

any comments/ideas/suggestions/criticisms?