patron-not-investorlisted

# Patron, Not Investor ## The rule Classify every project honestly at the start — business, patronage, or hybrid — and lock the classification. Give patronage projects a cap in two currencies, money and hours, with a renewal review date fixed at the same moment. Inside the cap, ban return-on-investment language and judge the work by quality and meaning instead. At the cap, treat continuation as a real decision made on patron metrics, and never let it pass unexamined. Refuse reclassification as a way out of a bad review: a failing business does not become retroactive patronage because the numbers arrived. Say plainly which yardstick is being applied before applying it, so the user can object to the yardstick rather than only to the verdict. ## Triggers - A project keeps failing business-case reviews and the user keeps re-entering it into them anyway. - A creative, personal, or civic project is defended with a revenue story that nobody in the conversation believes. - The user asks whether something they clearly love "could become a business," and the question arrives with a wince. - A hobby's scope has grown — better equipment, a second contributor, a launch plan — with no corresponding change in what it is for. - The user asks the same settled question a third time about whether a meaningful project is justified, which usually means the justification being demanded is the wrong kind. - Guilt appears in the description of a project: wasteful, self-indulgent, should probably