Hello Martin,
The main problem with it is the lack of knowledge about open source software in the first place. It would need a fairly elaborate marketing plan and implementation of such a plan to get things going. It soon will be the summer holidays, when pretty much nothing happens. For me that means having to scrape a living first and then figure out what to do with the remaining time. As the remaining time is related to the scraping a living thing, I will probably have to focus on whatever makes a buck and then eventually turn to the greater interests.
If it would be possible to get some funding to produce a marketing plan and if found acceptable to implement, then I could focus on such a thing. However, in a society where there is no wellfare for non citizens (and I can never be a citizen here), my first and foremost tasks is to make a buck. Though I would love create a campaign, get all materials translated and execute such a thing, I cannot bear any cost involved.
Maybe it is something for crowd funding? The cost wouldn't be all that impressive, but it might take half a year and several visits to places in this rather large country to get things going. All in all I would expect to have expenses of about 10 to 20k USD, cost of living, translations, printed materials, flights.. I would also need some pompous title to throw around in order to open doors, something like "Special ambassador for the Inkscape foundation". Ehm,.. yeah,.. really. That kind of nonsense helps.
If making the marketing plan could get funded for about 1k USD, I could spend my summer holiday on making that and creating a proposal.
The possible benefits would be a greater awareness of the existence of Inkscape in China, sponsored translations, code commits, invitations for talks and lectures in China and Chinese participation in the LGM meetings.
So,.. is it worth the effort?
Cheers,
Jelle
Message: 5 Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 08:17:09 +0100 From: Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Sponsoring To: jelle <chubbymoth@...36...>, inkscape-devel inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <1461568629.28283.28.camel@...400...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hi Jelle
On Sat, 2016-04-16 at 18:31 +0800, jelle wrote:
Already we have companies sponsoring part of the project by their own?? interest, which is how we end up with extensions for cutters and?? embroidery. True, they tend to be low profile sponsors, but I fail to see?? why we shouldn't embrace those that would like to be named. What are your feelings, thoughts and objections to something like that?
My feelings are that it's an interesting idea worth exploring. But would require some leg work on the ground there in China to really be effective. The trouble for many developers is that we in the west don't know how to talk to, set up or properly respect the contributions that may result from such a project.
The best way to progress forward is for someone like yourself to take the lead. Ask for certain resources to be put aside, for examine where on what pages and on what languages of what pages. How big, etc would be appropriate. And then deliver the right people.
And this what makes it a job for yourself rather than something that could happen organically. Much of what happens in inkscape is inertia and organic self-interest with a bit of careful guidance and thoughtful direction of contributions.
If you're interested in a community management position to deliver contributions from China (in whatever way possible) I'm willing to sponsor and support where I can from here.
Best Regards, Martin Owens