Curtis Olson wrote: > Gary and Stuart, > > We could certainly explore the donation route. I'm doing a little bit > of research to try to determine what the realistic costs would be to > setup a dedicated server to run a multiplayer system. That will give > us a better idea what we need to shoot for. > > Don't feel like you have to talk personal donation amounts in public, > but since we are on the subject, what's fair or realistic to ask > someone to donate per month or per year for something like this? > > If we go the donation route, will someone have to be constantly > pestering everyone to get their donations in this month? Will this be > an ongoing hassle trying to chase people down or drum up new donations > to keep the service running? Can we expect that people would commit > to donating some fixed dollar amount per month in perpetuity? I'm not > sure I'd feel comfortable making such a promise myself. One time > donations are a lot easier to get, but then we'd have to have someone > always hunting for more donations. > > What happens if we come up short in a month or a year? Do we cancel > the service? Do more begging? What if we collect more than we need? > FlightGear isn't an official non-profit which makes it harder to ask > for donations. Setting up a non-profit organization would be a real > good idea, but that takes someone who (a) knows how to do it and (b) > can commit to spending the non-trivial amount of time required to > manage the non-profit, file the paperwork, file tax returns, whatever > else needs to get done. There would be some non-trivial amount of > overhead in managing a non-profit which means a substantial portion of > donated money would go to overhead, not the intended purpose. I'm > just trying to think though the various scenarios realistically. > > There are a lot of sticky questions or the potential to seriously burn > up the time of key volunteers (or their money if we come up short on > donations and want to try to maintain the services.) > > We could continue in our current mode where we try to get people to > volunteer their own servers or their own bandwidth (or > servers/bandwidth they have control over). This can work, but as our > popularity and loads increase, this can be a bigger and bigger burden. > Volunteer services like this work best if they can fly under the > radar screen and not cause a problem or show up as the primary > resource hog when you print out usage stats reports. > > So this is why I floated what I think is at least an interesting idea. > Seeing if we could generate a consistent revenue trickle through > software ads/recommendations in our installer (i.e. www.opencandy.com > <http://www.opencandy.com>) Presumably if the stream provided enough > funds to buy some server bandwidth, it would be relatively consistent > and pretty easy for a single person to manage the whole process .... > much easier than the other options. I'm just making wild guesses at > costs and possible revenue right now, but if it worked out it would be > pretty slick, and would presumably scale with the popularity of > FlightGear. > > It's all open for discussion, and I don't want to link open-candy only > with paying for a multiplayer server, that's just the route my thought > process went through. > > For what it's worth, another model would be to setup a commercial > multiplayer server and charge people to access it, but that would > require a lot of infrastructure development and is probably my least > favorite of all the options. > > It would be nice if people could fly as much as they want online for > "free", except nothing is ever completely free so the question is who > is willing to pay and in what form is the payment made (donations of > money or servers, charge per use, having to click through a page of > suggested software packages when you install the software, etc.) > > Thinking out loud here .... > > Curt. > > > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Gary Neely wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Stuart Buchanan wrote: > > > I'd be prepared to contribute some money for a dedicated > MP/code/download > > server, even if it was in the US and I wouldn't benefit personally. > > > > I'm sure with a bit of publicity using the newsletter we could > get together > > sufficient contributions. We could even offer immortality in the > THANKS > > file for the project, if we were feeling particularly generous. > > > Just to back Stuart up, I had similar thoughts about contributions and > use of the newsletter. I would be pleased to donate funds regularly to > help maintain suitable MP servers. I can't speak for others, but I'm > willing to bet there are many like-minded members of the community out > there. > > -Gary aka Buckaroo > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports > standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. > Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating > great > experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > <mailto:Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel > > > > > -- > Curtis Olson: > http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ > <http://aem.umn.edu/%7Euav/> > http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/ > <http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports > standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. > Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great > experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel > Hi,
openttd.org does a fund-raiser every now and then - so does tt-forums.net the fundraiser is done max once a year (2010 has not seen a fund raiser as still enough funds are available from the previous one). also, some providers will agree to give you a server hosting plan at reduced cost if you embed an advertisement of the provider. in the case of openttd that is an advertisement for leaseweb. it's definitely worth running fund-raisers, however only if costs are not covered, so that the project itself does not run on a 'profit', nor could anybody make such a claim. as from the sides of openttd, i cannot say that they have ever come short, watching their fund raisers clearly showed that ~400 pounds were raised within 3-4 days max. however i will not dare to compare community sizes. that is beyond my judgment. greets Nathanael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
