On 07/10/10 21:47, Hal V. Engel wrote: > On Thursday, October 07, 2010 12:13:46 pm 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.
I floated the idea on the multiplayer section of the forum. http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9651 We were talking specifically about a sub for the FGCom server that I persuaded my friend to donate. That donation of server and bandwidth is good until it begins to impact on his business and we simply floated the idea as a what-if. BTW we expect to be able to use this FGCom server for at least a year, possibly indefinitely, that's why I announced it as a medium term solution. However I think the results are applicable to FGCommunity servers in general. So Donations or subscriptions? If the subscription is mandatory, what minimum service would be expected? What is affordable? Some of the replies are instructive. Some guy thinks $20/month is reasonable. For many people that's simply unaffordable. Some want it to continue for free of course. Its been free so far, why should that change? Some people don't use PayPal and would have difficulty sending money(in any form) beyond their national borders. My own thoughts are that ~$15 every three months should cover FGCom, MPservers, MPmap and a 99.9% uptime. Not only that but a decent ToS and User Agreement that would mean we'd be kicking spammers and motormouths as well. That means its a full time job for 2-3 people and these costs need to be factored in, so we'd need several thousand subscribers to make it work. Or we do it for a lot less and skip the moderation..... I definitely agree that some form of FlightGear Foundation is required to cover server costs and help with hardware for developers, pay for the BDFL to get to conferences ;-> etc etc For now, I think Curt's idea about opencandy is well worth looking at. Donations are all very well but Id hate to try to guarantee any level of service and just hope donations come in. I'd be interested to see the demographics but I think most users and developers are now based outside the US so any Foundation will need to fully reflect the international nature of the project. -- Best Regards Willie Fleming ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
