Individual Donations:

Qualified Full Time Equivalent Employee Program

The QFTE program is not the preferred way to meet the membership requirements of an OSDC program. It provides opportunity for much misunderstanding and conflict. However, since the goal is the creation of software that is of value to its consumers and the provision of a return for that value to the creators of the software, the QFTE program is made available to those organizations who can afford the labor more readily than they can afford US dollars. It is essential that those organizations who seek to meet their membership requirements through the QFTE program understand the following items:

A Qualified Full Time Equivalent Employee is a unit of labor. It can be one or several people whose combined contribution to OSDC is at least forty hours per week.
"Qualified" is a critically important word. Those who provide the labor must not just be any available bodies or the offscouring of the local office labor pool. They must be truly of value to OSDC. OSDC reserves all judgment in this matter, i.e., OSDC will determine whether or not the proposed labor is qualified.
While working for OSDC, QFTEs are fully at the disposal of OSDC. OSDC determines their tasks, priorities and standards. The member provides the employee's salary and benefits in lieu of the membership fee but the employee now "works" for OSDC.
QFTEs may be "fired", that is deemed no longer acceptable for meeting a member's membership requirements, if they do not meet the ethical, professional or productivity standards of OSDC. It is then the member's responsibility to either find a replacement or meet the membership requirement in US dollars.
QFTEs may be given any task within OSDC at the discretion of OSDC and are not restricted to the member's subscribed projects. This may seem unfair to the member at first but it is actually done by way of concession. If a project is already sufficiently staffed but there are needs elsewhere within OSDC, we would rather allow the potential member to meet their membership requirement with the QFTE and allocate the QFTE to the project where there is a need rather than refuse the QFTE for membership because there is not a need for them in the member's subscribed project. It also allows for load balancing between those products that are in heavy production cycles and those that are in maintenance mode.
QFTEs are free to leave their employer to take a position within OSDC without compensation to the employer. Because of the close alignment between OSDC's value and the member's value, it is in neither OSDC's nor the member's best interest for the QFTE to do this for the following reasons:
1. OSDC already has the services of the QFTE's labor. It has nothing to gain by employing the QFTE and loses the opportunity to bring in fresh talent with the funds allocated to the new position.XX
2. Both OSDC and the member suffer loss of value while the member seeks a replacement for the departing QFTE.
3. The relationship between OSDC and the member may be strained by such an event.
Nonetheless, OSDC believes that anyone is free to pursue any employment and should not be withheld from opportunity because it is inconvenient to OSDC. This is no different than if the QFTE left the member to take a position with a completely outside company except that when the QFTE takes a new position within OSDC, both OSDC and the member still have access to the talents and accrued knowledge of the QFTE.
The compensation and benefits provided by the member to the QFTE must be at least comparable and preferably superior to local standards.
The member has no claim to the intellectual property rights of any work produced by the QFTE in their work for OSDC.