It can be done, but culturally the projects are too different.
There were valid reasons for the hostility. Bringing money into the equation completely changes the dynamics of an all-volunteer project, and splits the developers into the gilded minority and the plebs who slave away for free. Plenty of volunteer organisations have been torn apart by the resentment and infighting that can result.
* Which developers are eligible for funding, and which are not?
* The organisation is no longer flat; some people are effectively profiting off the backs of the majority
* The meritocracy is lost; do the "paid staff" have more of a say than the "unpaid volunteers"
* Are "paid staff" even volunteers any more?
The vast majority of Debian developers work full time on their day jobs, and contribute to Debian as a labour of love in their spare time, or as part of their work for situations where organisations sanction Debian work.
I used to work 8 hours, and then come home and regularly work 4-8 hours on Debian. Every day for nearly a decade. Totally unsustainable, and I'm no longer an active contributor. But for people who are contributing that much, for free, you can see why there would be concerns over the effect of a paid class of contributor to the organisation as a whole.
None of that is to say it can't work. FreeBSD is smaller, more tightly-focused, and has a culture of corporate contribution. Paying people to write specific features delivers results on a schedule. I donate to the FreeBSD foundation for that reason. The developer culture seems to be much more tolerant of this (though I'm not a FreeBSD insider, so don't know all the details).
FreeBSD is vastly simpler to contribute to, so I can participate with vastly less commitment. Contributing a new port or an updated port or bugfix is simply a matter of attaching a patch to a bugzilla ticket. Maybe it's not so much of an issue because there's already a clear separation of core devs vs casual contributors. And that's OK.
There were valid reasons for the hostility. Bringing money into the equation completely changes the dynamics of an all-volunteer project, and splits the developers into the gilded minority and the plebs who slave away for free. Plenty of volunteer organisations have been torn apart by the resentment and infighting that can result.
* Which developers are eligible for funding, and which are not?
* The organisation is no longer flat; some people are effectively profiting off the backs of the majority
* The meritocracy is lost; do the "paid staff" have more of a say than the "unpaid volunteers"
* Are "paid staff" even volunteers any more?
The vast majority of Debian developers work full time on their day jobs, and contribute to Debian as a labour of love in their spare time, or as part of their work for situations where organisations sanction Debian work.
I used to work 8 hours, and then come home and regularly work 4-8 hours on Debian. Every day for nearly a decade. Totally unsustainable, and I'm no longer an active contributor. But for people who are contributing that much, for free, you can see why there would be concerns over the effect of a paid class of contributor to the organisation as a whole.
None of that is to say it can't work. FreeBSD is smaller, more tightly-focused, and has a culture of corporate contribution. Paying people to write specific features delivers results on a schedule. I donate to the FreeBSD foundation for that reason. The developer culture seems to be much more tolerant of this (though I'm not a FreeBSD insider, so don't know all the details).
FreeBSD is vastly simpler to contribute to, so I can participate with vastly less commitment. Contributing a new port or an updated port or bugfix is simply a matter of attaching a patch to a bugzilla ticket. Maybe it's not so much of an issue because there's already a clear separation of core devs vs casual contributors. And that's OK.