On Aug 10 2022, at 2:27 pm, Martin Owens <doctormo@gmail.com> wrote:
This is an interesting bit of news. Godot, which is a member of the
Software freedom Conservancy, and one of their largest other projects
have had their leadership set up a for profit company called w4 games.
This is ostensibly to develop Godot further.

That's great for them. I think that there are opportunities for Inkscape that are similar, but different. They're selling to smaller development studios who already understand the value of paying for development and support. I don't think there is a similar customer group for Inkscape. (though I haven't done an analysis proving either way)

Personally I think the biggest opportunity for Inkscape there would be to provide "certified" builds for the educational market along with support services. We've gotten many requests for those, and it's hard for us as an open source project to provide the appropriate guarantees that they require. Also, many school systems have started requiring support for all software approved for their computers (a good requirement, but again hard for us to handle as a volunteer project).

All in all, I think there is definitely room for commercial entities to exist along side and collaborate with the volunteer project.  Would love to see more of them exist.

Ted