On 07/03/12 23:02, Nacho wrote: > Hello, > > A project like this and the way you presented seems obvious that donations > are non profit focused but for you and others it consumes personal time so > here comes my question: > > What are your expectations talking about donations? Any number in mind? > > Hope my question doesn't bother anyone , but having a goal makes easier to > know where we are. > > :)
Not at all - we want to be as open as possible about how Mer is run. A rough estimate for infrastructure costs is about £5-10k per annum using Hetzner as an ISP - and that would support a hefty community build system. We may find that as our systems scale up we need to rent extra cost items too (I'm thinking racks and switches) and this could increase that. Our current budget is about £2.4k plus a donated server from Open-SLX On the "personal time" side the Mer Project is not currently planning to pay salaries - we've discussed this and the ideal situation is that organisations will recognise the value of Mer to their organisation and contribute by supporting key developers such as Carsten and I directly as consultants/contractors tasked to "go work on Mer". To manage risk it would be ideal for a few companies to spread the load and pay, eg 10h / week (or more or less) of our salary. That way if any individual company finishes a project or just decides to stop funding, we're not stuck and other organisations know that the project is robustly funded. It would make sense that developers working this way would also be available to spend time on customer projects or specific areas of Mer too. FWIW both Carsten and I are now actively looking for this kind of support at the moment. David -- "Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."
