[linux-audio-user] donations or sponsoring?

Leonard Ritter contact at leonard-ritter.com
Tue Feb 6 02:58:37 EST 2007


from http://www.leonard-ritter.com/donations_or_sponsoring


I keep bouncing an idea in my head, thinking about how to strengthen the
bonding between open source software developers and software users.

How is a beginning open source project funded, usually? Most of the time
not at all. The site features a donation button, and users are
encouraged to donate.

As an user, if you like an application very much, and would like to
support its development, you might want to donate. However a donation
has neither a direct connection to advancement of development, nor does
it give you a right to influence the priorities of new features and bug
fixes. It gives you no certainty that the application is still going to
be developed - what if the developer is being hired for a more lucrative
job? There is simply no contract, just a requirement of trust.

As an open source developer, how are you going to sustain and finance
ongoing development? You can not rely on ongoing donations. You also
need to care for fund raising. You have only a small understanding of
how many users deem your application to be important. There is no
dependency between you and your users, meaning that the choices you make
might not necessarily be choices embraced by the community. Again, there
is no contract, just a requirement of trust.

How to ensure a long-time interdependency between users and developers?

Since a long time, the IT world knows multiple answers to this question:
service contracts. A company using an open source product commercially
would buy a service contract, which includes a warranty for the program
and allows the company to prioritize bug fixes and addition of new
features. In exchange, the company funds development.

Of course, these contracts are of high volume, with a lot more money
involved than what an average user would be able to spend. However an
industrially used program has also less companies interested in it.

My suggestion is to move this to the private software user / open source
developer level. Users would be able to subscribe to a sponsoring
contract, being able to choose the amount of money they want to pay per
month or per year, starting at e.g. EUR 1/month or EUR 12/year. In
exchange, each user has a right to get his bugs fixed within a period of
14 days, and also earns a right to influence the priority of new
features suggested by the community.

The low pricing will make sponsoring attractive and thus increase the
number of sponsors. The more importance the project gains, the more
developers will get out of this deal, the more dependent they get on
subscriptions, the more bugs will be fixed, and the project will not be
abandoned. Since most users will have the same problems, the amount of
work required will not necessarily increase. Payment could be handled by
Paypal, which also supports subscriptions.

What do you think?


-- 
Leonard Ritter

-- Freelance Art & Logic
-- http://www.leonard-ritter.com





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