Hi all, hi Robert, As requested (and as expected), I start another thread about funding / hiring employees / an OSG staff. (Reference: http://lists.openscenegraph.org/pipermail/osg-users-openscenegraph.org/2008-December/020389.html )
Before I start answering Robert, I'd like to say building up an OSG team sounds *very* interesting for *all* OSG users since it would increase the quality and the power on various aspects, and increase the visibility, and finaly making OSG the unavoidable reference library for scene graph (and more). (Note: by "visibility", I mean working on a "marketing / advertisment" aspect) I really trust OSG, especially knowing that it's actively developped/supported and that there is a strong community around it. The problem is: how can a team be set up? Thread is opened. > It would nice if we could raise the money for a team, but I don't > think one could do it out of donations. We are talking about need to > raise $USD 50k to 100k a year to bring on dedicated staff, I can't > image us pulling in this type of donation each year. That's true. But maybe donations could be a begining? I'm thinking about donations because it can bring the starter point of something bigger. And maybe a part-time job to help you could do it at first? I'll send another mail about donations: I'll make a kind of poll to try to know how much money the community can bring to the project. That would be interesting and give you some clues about the fact that building a team is possible or not from donations. > For fixed such > salary costs you need a regular income to pay it, which points to a > subscriptions model. > > Support contracts would fit the requirement of regular income [...] Well, I'm not really in favor of a subscriptions model, but it depends on how it is made. A very important point for me is that the community must *not* be weakened: I strongly disagree to "kidnap" the whole community and say "hello folks! It's time to pay!", even if that happens elsewhere. However, there can be subscriptions and support contracts that don't weaken the community. I don't have much ideas at this moment, but that could be things like: - Subscriptions to an IM/voice support. - Consulting/expertise (well, as you already do I suppose). - On-demand tailor-made binaries generation. - On-demand tailor-made OSG extensions/customisations. - [Put your ideas here]. All of these require a team to work. So I guess that it will not be possible before "step 2" or 3 of an "OSG development plan". Again, that points to "step 1: donations". Creating a team surely requires to be done step by step. > What is more practical is leveraging a bit > of time from a number of different osg users. This is effectively > what we do right now, although not always as effectively and > consistently as is desirable As I said before, the community is a (the?) great value of OSG. But maybe these generous volunteers have to be managed a bit by another volunteer? I mean a kind of admin that only tries to follow what has to be done, what is done, who does it... and so on. I guess this would not take much time. Maybe I can help on that point if you wish, since I'm not an OSG expert and thus not able to help on other points. To sum up: - Manage volunteers - Get money from donations - Hire someone (even a part-time job) - Do some marketing / advertisment (I have a few ideas on that too!) - Make more contracts and paid supports - Hire another guy - Begin to make systematic binaries builds, tests, 3rdParty maintenance and distribution... - Go ahead... Does that sounds possible/correct/logical to you? Sincerely, Sukender PVLE - Lightweight cross-platform game engine - http://pvle.sourceforge.net/ _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
