Software commissioned by the project should be owned by the project

[_y_1]

I feel that the the Pylonboard project should be open-sourced immediately. Further, any future grants to software development projects should stipulate that the code be open source from the outset.

PylonBoard is a welcome addition to the infrastructure but the code is currently held privately by the author. I’ve never know any organization to employ a developer and then allow the developer to have ownership of the code they have been paid to write.

Ownership issues aside, open-sourcing the software will allow other developers to contribute to it. That can only be beneficial to the project. Encouraging developers to participate is especially important to a project like Python, which needs to do everything it can to encourage developers into the ecosystem.

[quasy]

Hi,
PylonBoard got a grant from pylon to create a product for it. That doesnt mean that the PylonBoard devs are an employ of pylon team. the grant agreement was clear for everyone to see and talk about, and open source was not one of the requierments.

If i rememeber correctly, the devs have said that in the future they might open-source it, but for now to allow development in early stage it will stay closed. (less then 1 month old)

Overall i agree with you, open source is the way. In order to create an ecosystem around pylon developers should be incentivised and to have tools to build on. Please speak up in the next pylon grant proposal and emphasise the need for an open source, perhaps the community will agree with you and require it from future project (but this is not the agreement with PylonBoard).

[_y_1]

@quasy

the grant agreement was clear for everyone to see

There was no “agreement” , no contract. There was an anonymous forum post which can be paraphrased as “A friend and I want 30k to continue to develop a project we’re working on.”

In the non-crypto world, there would be a contract, a tendering process, and project deliverables. The people allocating the funds would be experts in the field and would know what they should pay. And, most of all, it would be made clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that organisation paying for the software to be developed would own the software once it was written.

None of that was present here and this project is now moving in the direction of allocating millions of dollars’ worth of crypto through this same process.

We’re now in the situation that because nobody specifically said to the developer, “Oh, by the way, this software that we’re paying for, we want to take ownership of it when it is written.”, the developer himself has taken ownership of it.

It’s absolutely crazy.

[laine_ust]

Hi,

The developer here. I want to get a few things off my chest before we continue this discussion if OS or not, as I feel like you’re coming at this with a wrong perspective:

This project was started by me, in my spare time. I started providing insights to the contracts that no one else did, because I thought it would add value.
The community agreed and I took it further and decided, with a friend, to pursue an actual app for this.

I followed due process, as set up here on the Pylon forum, and posted a “grant proposal” on the forum that was left open for 14 days to discuss and tweak. This is the outlined process by the way, from the team:

Applying for the Pylon Community Fund

Pylon encourages active community involvement, driving DeFi and yield redirection adoption where users continuously build on top of the protocol. This document aims to outline a community spending framework for applying for community grants and third-party Pylon SDK integrations. Summary Pylon holds a store of MINE tokens in the community fund as a reserve to be used for the enhancement and empowerment of its ecosystem and community. The following document will provide frameworks that take the…

Secondly, my grant application actually does include both milestones and wiggle-room for changes along the way. The money paid out is not Pylons per se - it comes from the Community Fund and is thus your’s and I’s, if you governance stake that is.

Thirdly, I want to challenge your statement:
“”
it would be made clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that organisation paying for the software to be developed would own the software once it was written .
“”

If Pylon and other protocols continue to do this, they should not own it. It should be made OS under the MIT license or other open license, so everyone owns it - since it’s paid for by community money.

4’th point: I’m not employed by Pylon. Pylon asked the community whether they wanted to support further development of the project and they said yes. I’m still doing this in my spare time, with a friend.

But you’re right: I could have taken the Grant money and ran off.
However prior to opening this up:

• I had been active on the Pylon TG since June (and still am btw)
• I have become a co-admin there.
• I have shared my real identity with key members of the Pylon team - they actually know who I am
• I made prototypes of the app that was shared prior to the grant, to show that the deliverables were possible.

Now on to your actual concern:

Yes we want to OS is it down the line, but right now we’re working on it “privately” to avoid too much noise, and to actually deliver on the milestones set forth by the grant proposal.

I love OS, I use OS daily, also at work. And it would be great with help down the line from the Community.

Thanks.

[_y_1]

@laine_ust

I followed due process, as set up here on the Pylon forum

“Due process” as defined here is so loose and vague as to be meaningless.

@laine_ust

I could have taken the Grant money and ran off.

See above.

@laine_ust

This project was started by me, in my spare time.
I’m still doing this in my spare time, with a friend.

You repeatedly mention that you’re doing this in your spare time, almost as though you are doing it as a favor. You neglect to mention that you have been paid $30k for this work.

I see that 30k is the maximum amount that can be paid under this scheme and coincidently that is exactly the amount that you costed your project at. I see also that you have made provision for 4 further grants.

So when it turns out that, coincidently, you need the maximum 30k for each of those, you will have received 150k for this little spare-time project of yours. That from a system that purportedly pays out no more than 30k a pop. Cool.

You’re doing this in your spare time. Say 2 hours per day on average, 40 hours per month. The system went live about 1 month after your proposal. What is the hourly rate you are paying yourself?
You received 30k. Take a third of that off for overheads and work already completed, leaving 20k. That gives $20k for 40 hours work. $500/hour. Not bad for a part-time job

An exaggeration? You somehow managed to estimate the costs for this tiny project at $150 a month. Then immediately declared that you wanted 15k to put in Anchor which would generate $240 a month. Why?

Where is the wallet containing the 15k? Where are the receipts for the monthly outgoing?

@laine_ust

I’m not employed by Pylon.

Of course you are. You have been employed by Pylon to write software.

@laine_ust

If Pylon and other protocols continue to do this, they should not own it. It should be made OS under the MIT license or other open license, so everyone owns it - since it’s paid for by community money.

This is where we agree 100%. It should be made open source. But you refuse to make it open source and there is nothing anyone can do about that.

You are saying that if anyone else is given a grant it should be made open source, but if you are given a grant, it should not be made open source.

@laine_ust

Yes we want to OS is it down the line, but right now we’re working on it “privately”

And here is the problem. You and anyone else employed in this fashion can do whatever you like. Back in the non-crypto world You would not get to decide what to do with the software. The organisation who paid for it would.

@laine_ust

but right now we’re working on it “privately” to avoid too much noise

Seriously? Please tell me where this noise will come from. This forum is deserted, who will even know about your code? Even the big Terra repositories have virtually no reported issues. There is no “noise” at all.

This software is now live. There is no excuse for the source code not being publicly available. The software should be a deliverable of the project. It should be the deliverable of the project.

@laine_ust

I love OS, I use OS daily, also at work. And it would be great with help down the line from the Community.

The whole of crypto is built on open source. But, strangely enough, this little corner, where money has actually exchanged hands to have software built, is an exception.

@laine_ust

Thanks.

Thanks

[laine_ust]

I’m really trying to understand where you’re coming from, but it’s difficult for me. This seems more to me like you’re mad at the fact that I had the audacity to ask for money? I know what my time is worth, and I believe that all should be paid for work or contributions they are doing.

From reading your response, I still feel like you have the wrong perspective and interpretation of the whole matter. I hope you will take a deep breath and perhaps read everything twice, including my response here.

@_y_1

“Due process” as defined here is so loose and vague as to be meaningless.

I will leave the team to answer that, since this is feedback to Pylon and not me.

@_y_1

You repeatedly mention that you’re doing this in your spare time, almost as though you are doing it as a favor. You neglect to mention that you have been paid $30k for this work.

How am I neglecting to mention the $30K ? We’re discussing the fact that I took out that grant.

@_y_1

You’re doing this in your spare time. Say 2 hours per day on average, 40 hours per month. The system went live about 1 month after your proposal. What is the hourly rate you are paying yourself?

I have spent approximately (and am spending) 3 hours per day (including weekends) since September - let’s call that 80 hours a month. Also remember that my colleague joined, who puts in an almost equal amount. He joined the project in December. That gives us the following hour expenditure:

• me: Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan: 5 x 80 = 400 hours
• Dio: Dec, Jan 2 x 80 = 160 hours

Totalling 560 hours. That’s 3.5 man months, just to put things into perspective for you.

During the prototype deliveries in Datastudio (delivered in Q4 last year) I build a prototype backend - therefore I was able to deliver the “go live” version on dec 24’th, I also worked though the grant proposal period, without knowing whether we would get anything. Exactly so that we could deliver it fast.

You also seem to be either neglecting or oblivious to the fact that: yes, we have delivered, but we are also still delivering updates. We’ve made a total of 3 deployments, including go live, and the roadmap is still not covered. Our current planning goes into March with tasks.

@_y_1

What is the hourly rate you are paying yourself?

Currently we’re not paying our selves anything, and all cloud hosting bills go out of my own pocket. So currently we’re “paying” negative 100$ for hosting and 2x80 hours on top of our full time jobs, for this community work. 100$ because we currently haven’t activated all the cloud services mentioned in the grant.

@_y_1

An exaggeration? You somehow managed to estimate the costs for this tiny project at $150 a month. Then immediately declared that you wanted 15k to put in Anchor which would generate $240 a month. Why?

This is a wrong fact - I didn’t ask for an additional 15K UST. I said that I would sell up to half of the grant paid out, and deposit that to anchor. In order to give a runway for hosting to avoid

1. Asking for further grants to host
2. Avoid pay-walls or ADS to run the operation. Did you notice that it’s completely ad free?

That leave 15K UST (in MINE) that we pledged would be staked in Governance - to support Pylon and not just dump. We can’t pay out anything as long as it’s locked in Governance staking.

Have you run projects at scale in the cloud before? 150$ a month is actually a very small cloud bill to pay, and is not actually “at scale” yet, because that would leave a cloud bill at 1K+ UST per month.
So I estimated with 240$ to have room for scaling, in case this got very popular and required more muscles.

@_y_1

I see that 30k is the maximum amount that can be paid under this scheme and coincidently that is exactly the amount that you costed your project at. I see also that you have made provision for 4 further grants.

I followed due process and indicated where further grant applications could become relevant.
Whether I apply for them and the size of them, are still TBD. Should I decide to go full grant on some of them, it’s ultimately up to the GOV stakers to gauge and vote whether this is fair or not.

@_y_1

Of course you are. You have been employed by Pylon to write software.

I have not. I have received a community grant to work in my spare time != employment.

@_y_1

This is where we agree 100%. It should be made open source . But you refuse to make it open source and there is nothing anyone can do about that.

I’m not refusing - I’m doing the exact opposite. I told you that I will open source it, just not right now.
This in order for us to focus on the roadmap and deliver what we promised, without any “outsiders” opening up pull requests we have to vet and approve before merging.

Also I was merely pointing out a flaw in your logic: If Pylon decides to set forth any requirements for Development Grants, I believe they should be such that Pylon does not own it and everything is OSed under MIT or similar.

I hope this has shed more light on the matter for you. If you have further questions or comments please don’t hesitate to post again.

[SimonSez]

I won’t comment on the OS part - will let others chime in. My only take is that there are projects (even on Terra) which aren’t OS (think Kujira), especially if they aren’t dealing with smart contracts.

But this is my take on things regarding the grant: Being in crypto for awhile now, things don’t work the same way as the real world. You are right in that, in the non-crypto world, there is a due process. But it is what it is. NFT projects raise millions by setting up a Discord and twitter account, projects raise millions without anyone raising an eyebrow. The same is true even for projects launching on Pylon Pool - how come we aren’t asking them for these things that you are asking from Pylonboard?

To be fair, I think there needs to be a better vetting process for raising funds and I think the space is still trying to figure this due process out. However, calling out someone who took a 30k grant, has been transparent in the process, and delivered a working product for the community thus far, imo, is unfair and uncalled for.

Love Pylonboard! <3

[Woody]

@_y_1 The whole OS & ownership discussion is a fair topic to raise and something the community would benefit from. With that said, you’re now clearly acting in bad faith.

Each time someone discusses your concerns/issues you fire off 10 new problems you have without trying to find a solution to your initial problem.

You’re clearly not here to find a solution, rather you’re here to argue. For this reason I don’t think it is worth people’s time to reply to you.

I hope one day in the near future we can all discuss OS & ownership in a manner that works towards a solution.

[_y_1]

Discussing the expenses with you further is pointless because none of the figures you are providing are verifiable. I will however ask you again to provide the address of the wallet containing the 15k and the receipts of the project’s outgoings.

@laine_ust

I’m not refusing - I’m doing the exact opposite.

You are absolutely refusing. If you were not refusing the project would be now be open source.

@laine_ust

I told you that I will open source it, just not right now. This in order for us to focus on the roadmap and deliver what we promised, without any “outsiders” opening up pull requests we have to vet and approve before merging.

Frankly, this argument is nonsense and you know it. It is highly unlikely that anyone will be asking to contribute. Anyone who does so will be doing so with the best intentions of the project at heart. Any contributions that do arise will be small and easily vetted, not least because nobody will have had time to write major changes. But this is all hypothetical; you know that making the project open source is extremely unlikely to result in significant additional work on your part.

There is no reason whatsoever not to open source this project now.

In your own words.

@laine_ust

It should be made OS under the MIT license or other open license, so everyone owns it - since it’s paid for by community money .

[_y_1]

@SimonSez

I won’t comment on the OS part - will let others chime in.

Understood . My main reason for opening this thread was the OS issue.

@SimonSez

But it is what it is

Sorry, but I can’t go with that point of view.

@SimonSez

NFT projects raise millions by setting up a Discord and twitter account, projects raise millions without anyone raising an eyebrow. The same is true even for projects launching on Pylon Pool - how come we aren’t asking them for these things that you are asking from Pylonboard?

The argument that other places don’t do it right, therefore we shouldn’t either is another one that I can’t go along with.

@SimonSez

To be fair, I think there needs to be a better vetting process for raising funds and I think the space is still trying to figure this due process out. However, calling out someone who took a 30k grant, has been transparent in the process, and delivered a working product for the community thus far, imo, is unfair and uncalled for.

I don’t see it as “calling out”. I see it as asking reasonable questions about the use of project funds. If there were transparency here we would have receipts for Pylon board’s outgoings and we would know the address of the wallet containing the 15k.

[_y_1]

@Woody

you’re now clearly acting in bad faith.

I’m sorry that you see it that way. I see it as due dilligence.

@Woody

You’re clearly not here to find a solution, rather you’re here to argue.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

@Woody

For this reason I don’t think it is worth people’s time to reply to you.

It’s your prerogative not to reply. I’m sure the recipient of this grant and the recipients of future grants will be glad to see people taking that route.

[BoxedIn]

“…but the code is currently held privately by the author.” Thanks for alerting those of us who didn’t know. I also support the protocol taking ownership of code it commissions others to write.

[laine_ust]

@_y_1

I don’t see it as “calling out”. I see it as asking reasonable questions about the use of project funds. If there were transparency here we would have receipts for Pylon board’s outgoings and we would know the address of the wallet containing the 15k.

The wallet is known, it was part of the grant application process.

Anyway the payout transaction is this one, showing both value, sender and recipient (being Pylon Boards wallet):

https://finder.terra.money/mainnet/tx/2260fff478e75575c43a9414389f7d1f7460fee1865f2c8381c27c87a5c554c1

Currently there “only” 5K UST in Anchor. We decided to keep more $MINE staked than originally planned and additionally provided some of it as LP, rather than just flushing 50% of the grant to UST.

As for seeing invoices and expenses from a community project, I don’t know what to say really. It seems far fetched at best, but if you can point me in the direction of other dApps / community projects with these kind of insights in plain sight, perhaps you can sway me.

@_y_1

Understood . My main reason for opening this thread was the OS issue.

Then let’s keep it to that - because your line if inquiry seem to deviate far from this - which is why both @Woody and I feel like this post carries malicious intent, and honestly to me, feels like a witch hunt.

If you are truly here for “due diligence” and to improve on the structure going forward, may I suggest the following:

1. Create a new forum post to discuss whether the Grant proposal “agreement” shall be amended to forcing community projects to be OS from their inception (or at least as a requirement for the grant payout)
2. Create a new forum post detailing the changes you wish to see for the Due Diligence process up to a grant approval, and open up a positive line of communication with the team (@limowooj), rather than just shouting that “it’s shit”.

And for @BoxedIn - it has been transparent from the start, in my view, but I can see that if people assume that “it’s OS” it might come as a surprise that it is yet to be opened up.

Please bear in mind that “the protocol taking ownership” is not necessarily the same as open source by the way. That could also mean closed source repositories created by i.e Pylon. If anything the community should be the ones taking ownership, via open licenses and open source. But let’s discuss this specifics in a new post instead.

As mentioned many times during this discussion it will be open sourced once we are little further down the roadmap.

[BoxedIn]

Thanks for your comment. I didn’t mention “open source” because I (wrongly?) assumed that was a given. As for transparency, if all of these issues have already been addressed and documentation is available for any community member to peruse, then great. It should suffice, then, to point people to a repository of all these documents, contracts… so people who join the project after these decisions have been made can find the documents easily. I agree with the opening title that any software commissioned by the project should 100% be owned and controlled by the project, not the engineers working on the project.

[_y_1]

@laine_ust

Currently there “only” 5K UST in Anchor. We decided to keep more $MINE staked than originally planned and additionally provided some of it as LP, rather than just flushing 50% of the grant to UST.

What!! Unbelievable! You applied for and were given a grant on the grounds that you would put 15k into Anchor to secure the future the project. On receiving the grant, you completely disregarded that and put 10k of the 15k in a volatile asset which has since lost over 50% of its value. Why would you do that? Are you really intending to use these funds only for the project for which you were granted them?

Further, you claimed that your monthly costs are $150 per month. The 15k was to be deposited in Anchor to give you $240 per month (still don’t know why you want $240 month), the 5k you have currently deposited will return $80 per month, not close to covering your alleged expenses.

How much of the grant is left?

@laine_ust

As for seeing invoices and expenses from a community project, I don’t know what to say really. It seems far fetched at best, but if you can point me in the direction of other dApps / community projects with these kind of insights in plain sight, perhaps you can sway me.

They’re doing it wrong so I’m going to do it wrong too. Is that the best argument you can come up with? If you have nothing to hide, publish the expenses. It will take you five minutes.

@laine_ust

Then let’s keep it to that - because your line if inquiry seem to deviate far from this - which is why both @Woody and I feel like this post carries malicious intent, and honestly to me, feels like a witch hunt.

I opened this thread because I was concerned about ownership and OS. You pointed me to the terms and conditons of the grant. When I read those, I immediately became concerned about what was going on so came back to the thread with those concerns.

@laine_ust

If you are truly here for “due diligence” and to improve on the structure going forward, may I suggest the following…

I’m not sure it’s worth my time opening a new thread. There’s hardly anyone here Those who are here are not particularly concerned about what is going. I’m banging my head against a wall in this thread because, at the end of the day, you can do whatever you want with the grant and the software and nobody can do anything about it. I’m not really inclined to start another thread in the same vein.

[laine_ust]

But that would defeat the purpose of Community project, no?
Pylon Board was not opened / started by Pylon. It was started by me, to support the community. Why should
1 Pylon own that afterwards?
2 direct where the project is heading?

[laine_ust]

I was given the grant in a volatile asset - MINE. As you can see from the payout transaction I supplied you with. Which is pylons governance token. I am naturally interested in preserving as much of the grant in MINE to support Pylon going forward, rather than joining the rest in dumping their crypto.

You can see on the blockchain how much is left, I leave that as an exercise to you to go figure out, since anything I do or say to you is twisted and turned and disregarded or simply used against me on your witch hunt. Do your own research.

Apart of that I have no further comments on your, yet again, clearly malicious line of inquiry.

[_y_1]

@laine_ust

I was given the grant in a volatile asset - MINE. As you can see from the payout transaction I supplied you with. Which is pylons governance token. I am naturally interested in preserving as much of the grant in MINE to support Pylon going forward, rather than joining the rest in dumping their crypto.

The grant was made to you on the condition that you put 15k into Anchor to cover future hosting costs. You didn’t do that. You are clearly of the mindset that you can do whatever you please with the money once you have received it.

And, unfortunately, you can.

[_y_1]

I just want to add that when I when I said in the title that software commissioned by the project should be owned by the project, I meant that the software should be made open source. I didn’t mean to imply that the project should keep the software in a private repository.

[_y_1]

For anyone who is interested, the original $30k grant is now $19k