On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 10:22 AM, David Tisdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Chris, > > You thinking on the financial support is much further along than mine. > I like your idea of suggesting the Ardour model. > My $.02 on who should get paid is active developers. When software is > no longer developed, it dies.
I would tend to agree. If nothing else the former developers might be "cashed out" with a one-time fee for their efforts. It counts for something to contribute code but it's not a never-ending income stream, regardless of the size/difficulty of the code implemented. > The thing that seemed to be missing in the Ardour model was a > convenient way for institutions to use Purchase Orders. Schools in > particular work only with PO's. Schools would also have to do it as an > annual fee rather than as a monthly fee as the Ardour options seem to > be (except the 1 time donation). Music department budgets tend to be > limited and annual payments work much better for the budgeting > process. Another option would be a American-style "National Public Radio" format where someone can commit to X amount but have it divided it 12 chunks, charged once per month. I have no idea how something like that would work (Or if it would work for such a project like this). Even an automated subscription model with a periodic, small payments monthly/quarterly/etc. that is on-going until the user chooses to terminate his "subscription" would be wonderful. Again, no idea how this would work but I would be open to that type of idea since I could commit to a small amount per month and then forget about it without having to take conscious action every month since I hate trying to remembering about stuff like that. It would also allow us to commit to a smaller amount per month and still feel good about supporting the project since it would be a on-going effort instead of one tedious, embarrassingly small contribution. I just did a quick search and apparently there's already a PayPal method for making automated payments; just the thing! http://www.ehow.com/how_2155710_make-automatic-payments-paypal.html People may hate them but I've never had a problem when dealing with them and they certainly are convenient. > Michael and the other developers haven't weighed in on this discussion > yet. I am sure it feels awkward so they may be reluctant to say > something until something more concrete develops. > > Projects can only sustain themselves for so long without financial > support. People have to be able to make a living and things can come > up in people's lives that endanger the life of a project (I have seen > some promising opensource and shareware projects fall by the wayside > for that very reason). Rosegarden is too important to allow that to > happen to. I now do all of my composition and arranging in Rosegarden. > I would be lost without it. I am sure other people feel that way too. I had a couple thoughts on how the money might be divided. As mentioned, first go-round could help to pay former coders. From there on out there should be some kind of fund that's maintained by some trustworthy soul(s) and they can divide the money periodically based on a couple of metrics: LOC written (difficulty counts too); number of bugs fixed and difficulty (with maybe three levels: easy, reasonable, and very difficult). Implementing new feature requests would have the same levels of difficulty assigned as bugs although tracking hours/LOC may be necessary. Additional ideas include documentation writing (Michael!) per page or maybe per chapter which is something more accessible to get the community involved besides coding/bug fixing. --Translations and graphics (icons and pictures) would count for something too. To make things fair and manageable the core team could vote on merits of the work done; the community would provide votes/input in case of deadlock. Finally the process of splitting the funds would be done on a percentage basis so if nobody contributes nobody gets anything, avoiding having to pay fixed amounts for tasks, avoiding leaving others unpaid inasmuch possible. Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head although I'd be happy to provide more detail if it seems viable. The biggest problems IMHO are (In order of descending importance): acquiring funds; finding verifiable and honest means for tracking and disbursing the funds; standardizing the rewards per task; publishing/promoting this effort; keeping it going and avoiding the chaos and bad feelings that could ensue if rules aren't followed; finding even more funds and keeping the stream coming in (and ideally increasing as the project becomes more popular). I would love to see Rosegarden take off as a real A-list application for Linux and other similar systems (Not that it isn't popular already), similar to how popular GIMP and Open Office are. With careful governance it could motivate the core team as well as other individuals to join in the effort and really pick up some speed, features, and polish although obviously nobody's going to get rich off of it. Regards, Larry > > Is this something the Rosegarden community of users would like to > pursue? Do the developers want the community to pursue this? > > Thanks for listening. > > Dave > > > > On 5/21/08, Chris Cannam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 6:03 PM, Gunhild Andersen >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>> I'm sure the desire to see Rosegarden developers recieve some form of >>> financial compensation for the time and energy they put into the project >>> is widespread. Still, they're not exactly showered in donations. I've >>> never donated as much as a penny, and the reason is that I don't have >>> enough money to make any substantial donation and it would just feel >>> silly to just throw in a ridiculously small amount. >> >> I think there are lots of good reasons why not many people donate to >> this project. Some of them might be: >> >> * The program itself doesn't prompt you to -- you would have to >> notice the small link on the website. We wouldn't want to nag, but we >> could probably get away with prompting only once, at some random point >> during the first month of use of a new version of Rosegarden -- or >> something like that -- if we were aiming to make a serious effort to >> make donations work. >> >> * SourceForge's donations page is a little awkward and rather impersonal. >> >> * There's no guidance about how much would be a good idea to donate. >> A single "Do it now!" button with a modest fixed amount and zero >> choice would probably be more effective than the half a dozen quite >> various amounts SourceForge offers. >> >> * There is the awkward feeling you just described, in which a small >> donation seems too inadequate to be worthwhile. What helps here is >> knowing that many other people are also donating small amounts, and >> that it is proving helpful. >> >> * Our description of why you might want to donate is somewhat >> half-hearted. This is probably related to the prior point -- just as >> users might feel that their donation is not going to be enough to be >> useful, so we might feel that it's hard to raise enough to be useful >> and we wouldn't want to trouble you if we can't do that. We would >> need a quite different approach if we were going to set about it more >> seriously. >> >> * The donation goes to my personal PayPal account, and it's not >> evident that this is an appropriate place for "Rosegarden team" >> donations. We would need to have a more effective way to make it >> clear that donations will be distributed where they would be most >> useful (and, after making it clear, to actually do that). I guess >> we'd need a "disbursement committee" of currently active RG persons, >> or something like that, rather than one not very organised individual. >> >> * Many people dislike PayPal. >> >> It's worth comparing with the Ardour project (http://www.ardour.org/) >> which actively solicits donations in subscription form and is quite >> transparent about their number and size. Ardour has an added sense of >> urgency about it because its main developer is actually working on it >> full-time right now, rather than just seeing what happens or hoping to >> be able to work on it full-time in the future. As you can see from >> the Ardour home page it does bring in a certain amount, though an >> amount that would still be below minimum wage over here at least. >> >> Could we do as well as that? Could we do better? How much worse >> would we have to do before it became not worthwhile for us to bother >> our users by pressing for financial support, and/or risk serious >> disagreement amongst ourselves about how to use the donations? >> >> A lot probably depends on why we imagine people to be paying: >> >> * for us to stick around and be able to provide support and do new work? >> >> * because they feel part of a community and they see that some of >> that community is in need? >> >> * because they like the program as it stands and just want to say >> thank you? (This one suggests that former but no longer active >> developers ought to get a cut too, whereas the first two do not.) >> >> * just because we asked them to? >> >> * because they have some specific requirements that they want to >> encourage us to work on? (This is the Cofundos one, I guess. My >> problems with it: [a] not effective for the lots of small features >> that I imagine many people would like; [b] disproportionately favours >> pure development over the other roles that people in a project take; >> [c] there is no guarantee that the people most able to carry out a >> particular job will be in a position to do so even if they are >> sponsored: it may be more productive for the same money to be used >> differently, but the sponsors can't generally anticipate that; [d] it >> implies that a small number of users who are prepared to commit the >> most will be able to steer the project in their direction -- is that a >> good thing?) >> >> This is a difficult topic to discuss; it tends to get a lot of "well, >> we could do something a bit like this or that, but I'm not quite sure >> how" and very little of "what I think we should do is EXACTLY THIS, >> and I propose to sort it out right away". >> >> >> Chris >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft >> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. >> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ >> _______________________________________________ >> Rosegarden-user mailing list >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] - use the link below to unsubscribe >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user >> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Rosegarden-user mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] - use the link below to unsubscribe > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-devel mailing list [email protected] - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-devel
