So, I'd like to thank you all for your feedback on my griping about the SoC. It was comforting and encouraging. As I've explained, I would still love to be able to commit a lot of time to this project, but my economic constraints are the only thing holding me back from doing so. I was speaking with some open source activists from the GOSLING group here in Ottawa (http://www.goslingcommunity.org) about the SoC fall-through, and they encouraged me to seek funding for my project elsewhere. They made it seem very fesable, and they are very experienced in the world of FLOSS, so I am considering their suggestion. It occured to me I could get funding for this project in two ways (1) provide graphics services, where the deliverables would be images OR (2) provide "value added" to Inkscape, where the deliverables would be code. It seems these two might feed each other. Do any of you have suggestions about to get funding for my project ? I've thought to myself sometimes, "why should I get paid to do this when everyone else is doing it for free ?" I think the answer to that questions is "because I (and others) deserve to earn a living doing something enjoyable and that benefits the public". It occured to me that maybe some of you ARE getting paid to develop Inkscape. Is this the case ? How does that work ?
So, in pursuing this goal, I've jotted some courses of action: - rewrite the proposal to frame it more towards end users like graphic design companies and give the reasons why this project should be funded (technical/business/ethical) - search for other official grants - get businesses and individuals to start using Inkscape if they don't already - promote an official "Inkscape endorsers list" (businesses and individuals) on the wiki (and have a web button to acompany it) to develop contacts of those who do use Inkscape - put up my existing stand-alone scripts on sourceforge - expand my demo image portfolio on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wikinator/sets/72057594111379807/) - convince individuals and/or businesses who could benefit from my improvements to Inkscape to invest in my project (one or many ?)
Your continued feedback would be greatly appreciated,
--Justin