On Fri, 26 May 2006 09:38:49 -0400, Justin Wikinator <touchmewithsynchronicpulses@...400...> wrote:
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".
Generally, I would be cautious of thinking of employment in terms of an entitlement. In practice the world doesn't work that way.
I'd propose a different way of thinking about it: if some specific task remains undone, isn't it because people _aren't_ willing to do it for free for whatever reason? If people _were_ doing it all for free you wouldn't have a project to propose.
Now, eventually someone might come along and do that task for free (perhaps because it has become easier or more labor has become available), but until that time you have a window of opportunity where the task is worth money to someone (although there's no guarantee it's as much as you would want).
It occured to me that maybe some of you ARE getting paid to develop Inkscape. Is this the case ? How does that work ?
Sort of. Just as you suggest, there are at least two categories: people who subsidize their development time with artistic work done in Inkscape, and people who are paid for their development time by users of Inkscape in return the added value.
Two examples at opposite ends of the first group might be bulia and myself. At this point, I understand that bulia more or less depends on Inkscape for the graphic design work that feeds his family. Therefore, he gets a very direct return on the time he invests in improving it. For my part, my primary reason for getting involved with Sodipodi and subsequently founding Inkscape was to make comics. It's less clear, financially, that I will ever so much as break even on the time I've spent on Inkscape, but on the other hand I simply enjoy doing it and have other sources of income.
SoC might be an example of the second category, but as already discussed it's pretty limited. A much better example might be the graduate students from Monash U. who were paid for a while to work on evaluating and extending Inkscape as a testbed for their research.
I think in general, if you want to generate income from doing Open Source work, you will need to stick to more mature projects that provide a lot of value, and then there are really four options (in order of increasing potential security):
1) Solicit funding for particular tasks you want to do. Extremely difficult, but you do get to pick the tasks.
2) Build your own business supporting people who use particular Open Source products. Manuals, training, shrink-wrap, CD-ROMs, cutomizations, contract work. This is the "services and support" option that everyone always used to talk about. Your tasks will be dictated by your customers.
3) Build your own business on an Open Source infrastructure. Your investment in the products you use will be an investment in your business. Your tasks will be dictated by your own business requirements.
4) Get hired by an established company or organization who depends on an Open Source infrastructure, in a position where part or all of your duties will include contributing to the products they use. Your tasks will be dictated by your employer.
The more mature a particular project, the greater the availability of the later (more secure) options for generating income.
-mental