Yep... Now at least we have numbers on your thoughs! :) Sukender PVLE - Lightweight cross-platform game engine - http://pvle.sourceforge.net/
Le Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:25:02 +0100, Robert Osfield <[email protected]> a écrit: > Hi Sukender, > > Thanks for putting together the poll. The amount of donation doesn't > surprise me, and my guess is that it probably similar to the scale of > donations that other open source projects of a similar nature to ours > bring (looking at their public notifications of donations). I think > this is related to the limits of this type of revenue stream, 1000 USD > doesn't even cover the salary of a engineer for a week in the US or > western Europe. > > However, it's not the only revenue stream, consultancy, training, and > bespoke development work on top of the OSG currently pays for a > several engineers that work full-time on OSG related tasks. This is > just for engineers I know, I do see other vis-sim companies on the net > that advertise OSG related consultancy/dev services and I'm not even > familiar with them so I don't know how wide this little market might > be, but there is certainly several hundred thousand dollars per year > in this micro sector. Quite of bit of this commissioned work becomes > open source, and does the revenue also enables some of us to commit > quite of bit of free time in to general unpaid open source tasks. > > Personally I prefer the paid for service model as I know it works over > donations, as I know it works, and it doesn't rely on benevolence - > there are good economic reasons that organisations pay for these > services. There is actually quite a bit of good will in the contracts > I do, but one can't sell this to a manager who has to sign the cheque, > one has to have concrete return for the money put in. > > This is something that I see in open source contributions as well - > one can justify making code contributions on purely selfish grounds - > it helps you get your job done if your contributions are maintained, > debugged and extended by others, and since sharing costs you very > little there is a net gain to you the contributor. However, just > because you can justify your contributions on self-centered grounds > doesn't mean the actual process is self-centered, rather it promotes > good-will in others and the feeling of good-will in oneself, people > enjoy giving, it's a positive cycle. Being able to justify > collaboration and sharing of selfish grounds is the bed-rock of open > source development, it's the fallback position that enables you to > caltivate a wide community over a long period. Whereas basing > something entirely on benevolence is more fragile and less > encompassing. > > Robert. > > On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Sukender <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> The poll "How much would you donate to OpenSceneGgraph if there was a call >> for donations?" has ended. >> http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pjqNRx7sg7XqtfbsKBomuKg&hl=en >> I'll let the poll open a few days before deleting everything. >> >> The result is simply... hem... "far under expectations". >> >> Total answers: 16 >> Donation expected once: 643 $USD >> Donation expected yearly: 980 $USD >> (Using currencies conversion rates on 2009-01-12) >> >> Collected comments: >> >> - What you should do is have a membership system... always have free access >> (this is key to OSG success) but also have paid Academic/Professional Member >> type system. Higher levels get to do things like vote on things, get >> t-shirts, special email list, etc. If such a system existed I'd be happy to >> pay $200 a year (and it would be tax deductable). >> >> - This should -never- be mandatory; that would only scare away newcomers. >> I'm only considering donation because OSG could possibly contribute to the >> success of my new company. >> >> - It would be nice to attach the donation to the selection of one from a >> dynamic list of tasks, like my donation is for this task.... the tasks >> could be ranked for amount of money collected. The insertion of a new task >> could be subject to a minimum donation. >> >> - I feel I contribute directly to OSG with code and development, but I would >> be willing to kick in some $$$ occasionally. >> >> - I love OpenSceneGraph and promise contributing everytime. >> >> >> I'll post again if new answers are recorded before deletion. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Sukender >> PVLE - Lightweight cross-platform game engine - http://pvle.sourceforge.net/ >> _______________________________________________ >> osg-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org >> > _______________________________________________ > osg-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
