On Mon, 2012-12-10 at 18:03 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 05:11:19PM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
PROPOSAL 1: Inkscape should enter into the agreement with Canonical and submit future releases of Inkscape to the extras repository, pending review of the TOS from the Conservancy.
At the same time, the My Apps interface allows us to distribute applications that have a fee associated with them. While it's really designed for selling proprietary software, it seems like we could also have an application that was "Inkscape (Donation Edition)" that cost something like $5 that users who wanted to could choose to install. I was thinking that this edition could have a special about screen or perhaps some filters or palettes -- some sort of Thank You. We could keep that in version control, just not distribute it with the main tarball/executable bundles we ship.
I haven't read the agreement, but in concept I don't see a problem with it.
In fact, I'm not sure this is something we really even need a board vote on; it's basically just another avenue for distributing Inkscape to users, so sounds like it falls within the scope of the normal Inkscape packaging crew.
If there *is* some bit in the terms of service which would require a board vote, then I think we'd better have those issues highlighted so we can give them adequate consideration.
Well, since technically it'd be Inkscape entering into an agreement with Canonical I feel two things:
1) It's an agreement, the Board should at least talk about it if not vote on it since it is going to use the project's name.
2) I work for Canonical. Someone else should ACK it. (not you ;-) )
If we had some sort of Executive Director set up or something like that, I'd have no problem with that person doing that on their own. But the only leadership we have defined is here...
PROPOSAL 2: Inkscape should release a donation edition of Inkscape to Ubuntu extras at a price set by the board.
What are people's thoughts on all of this? Yea, nay? I'm not sure it would end up being a large donation stream, but I do think it's worth trying. There will probably be some people upset at us trying to "commercialize" Inkscape, but I don't think that's really the case here and I'm willing to have that conversation.
It sounds like a good idea, although three things:
- We'll have to ensure it's legally permissible to do this within our non-profit constraints.
For sure. I talked with Tony for a couple minutes about it and he didn't see anything immediately concerning, but said he'd take a closer look if the board was interested in doing it.
- Like njh pointed out, we ought to have a plan for usage of the revenue before undertaking this. Which really means we need an organizer to make whatever arrangements/purchases/etc. required. A hackfest focusing on bug fixing or implementing a few highly requested features could perhaps stimulate a lot of donation activity.
I feel like that would be good, but orthogonal to putting the donation edition in USC. The reason being that I don't think people will seek out the donation edition, I think that they'll install Inkscape on their new machine and notice that there's two entries in the Software Center and go "Oh, $5, sure, why not?" and install that one. I'm hoping to get people that never visit our webpage and have any ideas of our programs.
So, I don't think spending money on a hackfest and putting in USC need to necessarily be connected. I think that'd be more important for a normal fund raising campaign, I see this more as "background" fund raising.
- What fees are charged? The TOS says 20%; any other fees?
There is some talk about credit card fees in there as well. But I couldn't figure out whether those were in the 20% or not. I'll try to grab David tomorrow and ask.
--Ted
PS - I see your numbered list and I raise you one.