Re: [Inkscape-devel] funding inkscape developement
LyX has some kind of mechanism for jointly donating towards the implementation of a specific feature.
With a bit of googling there seem to be quite a number of sites for
arranging freelance work like this. I don't know if anyone here has an experience with such a site or would be able to recommend one, but my guess would be that it might be easiest and most transparent to just post your requests on such a site and announce it here, especially if you also want to let others donate.
The Horde Project runs a bounty program. If Inkscape were to adopt a funding program, it should probably follow Horde's model (whoever implements the first accepted patch wins the bounty, patch approval & bounty program are administered and/or escrowed by senior Horde devs [historically Chuck & Jan]).
http://www.horde.org/ -- sum of bounty treasure-house on front page
http://www.horde.org/bounties/ -- list of sponsored feature requests
Derek
2010/8/22 Björn Göransson <bornemix@...400...>
LyX has some kind of mechanism for jointly donating towards the implementation of a specific feature.
With a bit of googling there seem to be quite a number of sites for
arranging freelance work like this. I don't know if anyone here has an experience with such a site or would be able to recommend one, but my guess would be that it might be easiest and most transparent to just post your requests on such a site and announce it here, especially if you also want to let others donate.
-- Med vänlig hälsning, Björn A. Göransson
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I agree that we don't need a centralized "Inkscape Foundation." Centralization rarely works too well in open source, especially since we don't seem to have an excess of people willing to head such a centralized body.
I think what we need instead is an "Inkscape Marketplace" page where developers, and later possibly also designers and other service providers, could advertise themselves as available for Inkscape-related work. Yet it shouldn't be an open-for-all wiki-like list, as that would likely scare potential customers off. We could use some minimum threshold for those willing to be listed there, for example (most logical choice) to only allow in those who have commit access to the repository.
For small projects, patches, fixes, etc., a bounty-based system may indeed work best: the customer sets the price/conditions and accepts the first submission that satisfies these conditions, no matter who did it. We can incorporate such a system into our Marketplace as well, or link to an external system such as Horde.
However, some customers will likely want longer-term commitments, ongoing work, or more ambitious changes. It would be hard to expect that people will jump on that "out of the blue" and work without some guarantee of remuneration. On the other hand, the customers would also like to look at the testimonials of the programmer and discuss the project with him before hiring. That's where the contact details of available developers would be the best bet, listed with each developer's area of interest and his main achievements in Inkscape.
Now that we're discussing a redesign of our site, does anyone else feel that we should have such a Marketplace page on it, possibly replacing the nonfunctional Donate page?
+0xFF
Den 21 september 2010 22:54 skrev Dave Crossland <dave@...1555...>:
2010/9/21 bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...>:
does anyone else feel that we should have such a Marketplace page on it, possibly replacing the nonfunctional Donate page?
+100 :)
On 9/22/10, bulia byak wrote:
Now that we're discussing a redesign of our site, does anyone else feel that we should have such a Marketplace page on it, possibly replacing the nonfunctional Donate page?
In general I think that being able to get at least some of the developers paid for their work make a perfect sense. At least half of the new features over last several years have come from GSoC anyway, and Tav's work was extremely successful.
There is one thing we need to understand however: some features take a lot of time to code, and we might never see enough money to support their development. E.g. last time I checked MIDI editing in Ardour collected just $1200 which doesn't cover 1% of the actual cost (that hasn't stopped Paul from doing actual work, though). You can easily find comparable tasks in Inkscape. Not that we shouldn't try, mind you :)
Another thing is that any development efforts, except probably custom extensions development, should be discussed in the list and be mentored by the team.
This is exactly where I see the problem: presumably the project still has a committee, but it doesn't look like the committee is around. I had my reasons to contact it about a year ago and never heard back from it. People in this list asked about financing travels for developers and never heard back from it (at least, not in the list). Our PayPal account hasn't been restored yet, to the best of my knowledge, despite of being inactive for years.
I don't like what I'm about to say, but I have to say that: we need some kind of authority in the project to orchestrate it, because without it any kind of marketplace is likely to ruin the whole project. I, personally, would prefer to have the committee come back from wherever they are.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine
There is one thing we need to understand however: some features take a lot of time to code, and we might never see enough money to support their development. E.g. last time I checked MIDI editing in Ardour collected just $1200 which doesn't cover 1% of the actual cost (that hasn't stopped Paul from doing actual work, though). You can easily find comparable tasks in Inkscape. Not that we shouldn't try, mind you :)
That tends to self-regulate. Someone wants something done, and has some budget. Someone can get it done, and has a pretty good idea of how long it will take. Assumedly that second someone also wants it done, and so can work for less money than the average market rate. They will discuss this and hopefully reach some kind of balance.
Another thing is that any development efforts, except probably custom extensions development, should be discussed in the list and be mentored by the team.
Of course. It's not exempt from all the usual rules: discuss on the list, fill in Release Notes, respond to bugs and criticism.
This is exactly where I see the problem: presumably the project still has a committee, but it doesn't look like the committee is around. I had my reasons to contact it about a year ago and never heard back from it.
If you want a committee to discuss development matters, we don't have it, and I think that's a good thing. We operate more or less by consensus.
If you want a committee to accept donations and distribute them as travel grants (possibly little else), then we don't have it either, and it's probably not a good thing. But people have a natural reluctancy to take responsibility for other people's money, especially when the amounts are small ("more trouble than it's worth"). Given that we've been able to operate without it, perhaps it's not that critical. Though if someone trusted now comes forward willing to collect donations and manage the resulting fund, I don't think anyone will object.
I don't like what I'm about to say, but I have to say that: we need some kind of authority in the project to orchestrate it, because without it any kind of marketplace is likely to ruin the whole project.
I really don't see how it can ruin anything. A scenario where someone pays money to implement something disruptive, and it all passes under the radar of the community, seems rather far-fetched to me.
Any ideas of a good organization which helps FLOSS projects collect funds? Just a simple collection/maintenance thing, is what I'm thinking of.
That might be the best route to go, for accountability as well as no worry of "losing access" to it.
JF
On 09/21/2010 08:24 PM, bulia byak wrote:
But people have a natural reluctancy to take responsibility for other people's money, especially when the amounts are small ("more trouble than it's worth"). Given that we've been able to operate without it, perhaps it's not that critical. Though if someone trusted now comes forward willing to collect donations and manage the resulting fund, I don't think anyone will object.
Not specifically directed at FLOSS, but kickstarter.com might be worth a look.
I haven't followed this discussion closely, so it may or may not fit the purpose.
- Bryan
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:07, Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer@...400...> wrote:
Any ideas of a good organization which helps FLOSS projects collect funds? Just a simple collection/maintenance thing, is what I'm thinking of.
That might be the best route to go, for accountability as well as no worry of "losing access" to it.
JF
On 09/21/2010 08:24 PM, bulia byak wrote:
But people have a natural reluctancy to take responsibility for other people's money, especially when the amounts are small ("more trouble than it's worth"). Given that we've been able to operate without it, perhaps it's not that critical. Though if someone trusted now comes forward willing to collect donations and manage the resulting fund, I don't think anyone will object.
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I think Kickstarter is for funding a specific project, whereas we're looking more to fund travel and expense for developers continuously and/or a general purpose bounty type fund for recurring use.
It's good to keep in mind for the future if there's a need, but I don't think it fits this one.
Any others? I've done a good bit of googling, and haven't come across anything in particular.
BTW, what exactly is the status of the SFC membership?
JF
On 09/22/2010 08:20 PM, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology wrote:
Not specifically directed at FLOSS, but kickstarter.com http://kickstarter.com might be worth a look.
I haven't followed this discussion closely, so it may or may not fit the purpose.
- Bryan
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:07, Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer@...400... mailto:jfacemyer@...400...> wrote:
Any ideas of a good organization which helps FLOSS projects collect funds? Just a simple collection/maintenance thing, is what I'm thinking of. That might be the best route to go, for accountability as well as no worry of "losing access" to it. JF On 09/21/2010 08:24 PM, bulia byak wrote: > But people have a natural > reluctancy to take responsibility for other people's money, especially > when the amounts are small ("more trouble than it's worth"). Given > that we've been able to operate without it, perhaps it's not that > critical. Though if someone trusted now comes forward willing to > collect donations and manage the resulting fund, I don't think anyone > will object. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel-- PS. Check out the Brush newsletter: *Subscribe or read our previous newsletters* http://brush.co.nz/newsletters
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On Tue, 2010-09-21 at 21:24 -0300, bulia byak wrote:
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine
This is exactly where I see the problem: presumably the project still has a committee, but it doesn't look like the committee is around. I had my reasons to contact it about a year ago and never heard back from it.
If you want a committee to discuss development matters, we don't have it, and I think that's a good thing. We operate more or less by consensus.
If you want a committee to accept donations and distribute them as travel grants (possibly little else), then we don't have it either, and it's probably not a good thing. But people have a natural reluctancy to take responsibility for other people's money, especially when the amounts are small ("more trouble than it's worth"). Given that we've been able to operate without it, perhaps it's not that critical. Though if someone trusted now comes forward willing to collect donations and manage the resulting fund, I don't think anyone will object.
We do technically have this with an inkscape-board, but it's fairly inactive as we don't have much money or really need for money. We mostly end up distributing some money for LGM travel occasionally. I imagine if we had more money this would end up being more active.
On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 00:23 -0400, Joshua Facemyer wrote:
BTW, what exactly is the status of the SFC membership?
Currently Inkscape has an account with SFLC and that contains all of the money that "the project" has. It's not very much. Most of it comes from the mentoring bonus that Google Summer of Code pays out. It also receives some money from donations, but that hasn't resulted in a lot of money even compared to the mentor money from Google.
So in general, I'd describe both of these as the "Inkscape Foundation" as much as anything is. But, I don't believe that it is, or should be, an organization the developers work for or leads development.
Lastly, I'll say that when Linux Fund came and offered half of the money for a project, the community didn't exactly come up with the other half quickly and fund that project. I think while everyone says "I've got a bit of money" they don't have any agreement on where that should go so there's never a pot big enough to actually implement any of the features people want to pay for.
--Ted
On 9/24/10, Ted Gould wrote:
Lastly, I'll say that when Linux Fund came and offered half of the money for a project, the community didn't exactly come up with the other half quickly and fund that project. I think while everyone says "I've got a bit of money" they don't have any agreement on where that should go so there's never a pot big enough to actually implement any of the features people want to pay for.
AFAIK, there were two stages of the LinuxFund story.
The first stage was when we said "'ullo? Anybody there? May we please gain some of you attention to a little project that might come in handy to you, if you have two minutes of your time?"
And the there was the second stage when Jon Cruz was lining everybody in ranks and shouting "Quick! All the money you can give! Best project of this century! If will be telling your grandchildren how you participated!" :)
Oh, there was the third stage actually too, when Tav came and bloody well did what was due to be done.
In other words, we have a lot to learn about marketing and crowdsfunding.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
participants (9)
-
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Björn Göransson -
Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology -
bulia byak -
Dave Crossland -
Derek Moore -
Diederik van Lierop -
Joshua Facemyer -
Ted Gould