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The Almighty Buck Software

Finding Sponsors for an Open Source Project? 209

Posted by Cliff from the money-money-money-moo-ney dept.
vertigo72 asks: "What's the best way to find sponsors for an open source project? Is there some people or foundations that give grants for the development of free software? We develop an open source (GPL) box office software: phpMyTicket. At our knowledge at the moment this is the only open source software of this kind. The program is in advanced beta stage and was already used in production environment by us and by other people. The program is rather complex and big: we support online ticket shop, box office with thermal printer and control at doors with barcode scanner. Smarty, PDF and email template engines are used. Paypal and some other gateways are supported. Now we want to continue and to add more professional features, but alas this requires more funding."
"We tried to finance our development ourselves, but that didn't work. We tried support, installation and customization, and also a commercial license, but there are just not enough requests. We also had few donations (to the tune of around $50) via Sourceforge. Now, we searching for alternative solutions like sponsoring. Is there someone out there who can help us to keep the software free?"
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Finding Sponsors for an Open Source Project? More

Finding Sponsors for an Open Source Project?

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  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by samtihen ( 798412 ) * on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:00PM (#12482169) Homepage
    [Obvious] Oh, well the best way to get funding would probably be to get information about your project posted on a high traffic, open source friendly discussion forum. Yea, I'd probably do that first...

    • Donations vs funding (Score:5, Informative)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @09:38PM (#12483876)
      There is a big difference between funding and donations. Funding really means getting someone to commit to paying $xxx for the software to be developed, while donations mean releasing the finished software then asking people to make micropayments etc.

      I develop OSS. I was lucky in getting funding up front, but now that the software is shipping and in use there is no funding coming in for ongoing support and maintenance. I asked an OSS developer whether they get any cash from their "begging" on their web page. They say they only get a couple of hundred bucks a year from that.

      At the end of the day, people don't pay for what they value. They pay for what they have to pay for. You don't pay for air.

      Sometimes you can make some money out of selling non-GPL licenses to your OSS. That only works if you hold all copyrights.

      Otherwise, OSS is often very difficult stuff to fund. In part this is due to the immaturity of the user base. People feel cheated if they pay for free stuff. In time, people might come to freely pay for stuff that they benefit from (like the way many people happily pay extra for organic produce: not only because it tastes better but also because it is ethical to support it).

      • At the end of the day, people don't pay for what they value. They pay for what they have to pay for.

        Exactly.. and with OSS, what people sometimes have to pay for is the labor to initially create it. That may come indirectly through support contracts or directly through development contracts. At the end of the day, you go with what does the job for the lowest cost. If a proprietary package will cost your business $80,000 to license but it will only cost $40,000 to contract required development of a matu
        • Every single business would go for the $80,000 propriety package. Firstly, businesses buy from other businesses, not from college students programming in their spare time, none of who want to have responsibility and their ass on the line. Secondly, no business cares that 12 people 'could' pool their resources together a year from now. They care about what WILL happen, and put that into a license and buy from a company whose whole job it is to support the product. Thirdly, businesses expect tech support
          • Every single business would go for the $80,000 propriety package. Firstly, businesses buy from other businesses, not from college students programming in their spare time, none of who want to have responsibility and their ass on the line.

            Obviously you didn't even read my post because I said professional, commercial development not college students. But yeah, I agree: college students and hobby hackers are usually useless to produce quality code.

            Secondly, no business cares that 12 people 'could' pool th

      • Otherwise, OSS is often very difficult stuff to fund. In part this is due to the immaturity of the user base. People feel cheated if they pay for free stuff.

        No, people feel they have been lied to and misled when they are told that something 'free', isn't actually free. In the real world this is called 'bait and switch', and is an illegal marketing tactic.

        The immature ones are those who put something on the market as being free, and are dismayed when people take them at their word.

  • Theaters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TildeMan ( 472701 ) <gsivek AT mit DOT edu> on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:00PM (#12482180) Homepage
    Have you tried asking the national theater chains themselves? If you can convince them that this is something that will greatly benefit them and all their branches, they could very well be your best sponsors.

    • Re:Theaters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:09PM (#12482304) Homepage Journal
      Maybe you could approach some independant theaters and such and see what they are using for software? Anyone big or little who is getting sucked dry by expensive software companies is bound to be interested. I have no idea how much companies pay for this type of software, but I do know there are plenty of other companies in other areas (*cough* Mentor Graphics/Cadence/Synopsis *cough*) who are vampires in need of some competition.

  • you could always try... (Score:3, Funny)

    by soupdevil ( 587476 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:01PM (#12482191)
    begging for dollars on Slashdot... in other words, Congratulations! Your funds will be arriving shortly, I'm sure.

  • Why, why, why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:04PM (#12482222)
    If someone can buy a thermal printer, hosting, and a barcode scanner, not to mention venue, why can't they pay for their ticket-selling software?

    "Hey, can you help me find someone who will give us money to give free help to people charging admission to shows?"

    WHY?

    • Re:Why, why, why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:37PM (#12482571)
      "Hey, can you help me find someone who will give us money to give free help to people charging admission to shows?"

      Running a movie theatre is a low-margin business -- typically one loses money on the tickets and needs to make it up elsewhere (concession stand, ads, etc). If one can get the software to run the business (ie. by paying an open source project to add the features needed to make it adequate for one's needs) for less than the cost of comparable commercial solutions -- well, then you're ahead.

      It makes sense, then, that someone with a vested interest in not giving money to the commercial vendors of such software will find such a project as this interesting, and potentially a worthy recipient of (some level of) funding. Ideally, you'd want to target folks who are heavily hit by the pricing model of the commercial competitors -- say, those who own a number of theatres, or those whose theatres have multiple entrances or ticket booths if that's how the commercial software is priced -- or those who need features the commercial competitors don't currently provide.
      • So then, both the developers and the venture capitalists are in it in order to lower the operating costs of movie theaters? And the customers will be those who do not want to give money to commercial software vendors (ie: people who don't want to pay for software if they can get away with it (ie: everybody)) Who are these people? I have a need for a free point-of-sale system and a complete list of specifications. It would significantly lower our cost of operations. Where can I send what I need? I know
        • So then, both the developers and the venture capitalists are in it in order to lower the operating costs of movie theaters?

          Of course not. I'm going to make a few guesses here which are in line with my experience:

          The initial developers probably have their own vested interest of some sort -- either they're employed by a theater, or volunteer for a community-run one, or something of that sort. Having generated some useful software out of self-interest (and quite possibly with some baseline of funding which

    • Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Because they bought a thermal printer, hosting, a barcode scanner and a venue.

      I've never really understood this reasoning, yet I hear it all the time:

      "Well, if he can afford a Ferrari he can afford to maintain it."

      Right, he's now a couple hundred thou poorer and probably in the hole for it, soooooooo. . .

      Obviously he has a lot of money left over. Plain logic is what we call that.

      This must be how the government thinks:

      "We just spent an unexpected $300 billion and had to borrow $200 billion of it from o

    • Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2, Informative)

      by heychris ( 587825 )
      As someone who runs a non-profit theatre, I can tell you that ticketing is necessary, but not exactly cheap. You can go with TicketMaster, and have their fees add to the cost of your ticket. If you're looking to provide affordable programs, TicketMaster's additional fees may end up pricing you right out of your target market all by themselves.

      In Chicago, the big non-profits have soup-to-nuts solutions; look here [performink.com] for a more in-depth look at what's involved. The Chicago Symphony actually rolled their own, b

    • They don't have to pay for their software per se. But you may be able to get current users to pay you to add the advanced features you want to add.

      In these cases, bounty systems, developer support accounts, etc. are useful in terms of building your revenue base for the project. Also leverage the community. Maybe they will pay you or a third party to add the features you need.

  • Use fundable (Score:5, Informative)

    by alien88 ( 218348 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:06PM (#12482248)
    If you know of a group of people who are interested in a feature, try using http://www.fundable.org/ [fundable.org] to create a group action.

    EG: You have 5 people interested, each person contributes $100, when all 5 people contribute the $100 then the money is unlocked and you can use that to finance the development of the feature.
    • This sounds like a pyramid scheme... Pretend the goal is $100 1) Innocent #1 contributes $10 2) Innocent #2 contributes $10 3) Innocent #3 contributes $10 4) Party Leader contributes $70 (as Innocent #4) and unlocks the wad. Party Leader walks away with $30 profit. 5) Party leader changes identity and goes to step 1...

      • This sounds like a pyramid scheme...

        As compared to the M$ pyramid scheme?

        Innocent #1 contributes $1000, innocent #2 contributes $1000, ..., innocent #100000+ contributes $1000. Income $35,000,000,000+ per year, cost of development a minute fraction of that, despite what they claim in their annual report.

        Looks like market failure and the next best thing to a pyramid scheme to me.

        It's caused by broken IP law that allows one player in a market to make a huge multiple of net profit of what another pla

    • I've seen some projects use a bonus system. Works something like this:

      Users of the software can make feature requests (as usual), and you may add things yourself to this wishlist.

      For each item, you make an estimate of how much effort it would take to implement the feature, or how much money you'd want yourself to do it. You could use a bidding system to let other developers (freelance, or project contributors, whatever) make a better offer. Note: a $$ amount need not reflect fair compensation for the w

  • what's the commercial solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pointyhairedmba ( 698579 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:06PM (#12482253)
    I'll go ahead and ask the MBA question. What's the competing commercial product? How much does it cost per year? How much will a theater chain save with your solution? Quantiffy those answers into a simple NPV model and pitch it to execs at theater chains.
    • Spell the word "quantify" correctly, and pitch yourself as an MBA on Slashdot.
    • Quantiffy [sic] those answers into a simple NPV model and pitch it to execs at theater chains.

      Exactly. I used to work for a company who made ticketing software. It can get quite complex, i.e. drivers for thermal ticket printers, support for touch-screen kiosks, support for internet presales, scheduling, revenue recognition (recognizing revenue for a pre-sale advance tickets on the day if the show, not the day you get the money), support for gift certificates, foreign currency, split payment, taxes, assig

    • Closest competitor I can think of is AudienceView. While they have a lot of features, I haven't been totally impressed with their software.

  • What an idea... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RedHatRebel0 ( 800752 )
    If your project is worthwhile enough that a lot of people use it, it will generate some revenue, but open source software only generates large amounts of money for the big guys like Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, etc. Of course, you could just post on Slashdot and the money could come pouring in ... if you have a worthwhile project I state again. Instead, I would recommend going to the companies or individuals that use your program & ask them for donations.
  • Don't open source. Sell licences to use it.
    • This looks like a market that is already in the hands of certain proprietary vendors. If you want to enter that market, you need a competitive edge. Being free/open source would be such an edge, definitely, but you need patience to let that concept sink in with the people you're trying to win as customers.

      And no, selling it as a proprietary product won't buy them anything, I'm sure. If the customers don't want to use it when it's free they surely won't pay for it, either.

      • If the customers don't want to use it when it's free they surely won't pay for it, either.

        Perhaps not, although there is something to the old adage of "you get what you pay for". Not necessarily that better = more expensive, but that subconsciously at least many people do associate "cheap" with "inferior".

        There is an optimum price point for everything, and it isn't always 0...

        • There is an optimum price point for everything, and it isn't always 0...

          It approaches zero per user when a piece of software produced by one person can be used by billions. Anything else is market failure. It's only niche software where a significant cost per user makes sense.

          ---

          Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.

  • I'll go ahead and ask the MBA question. What's the commercial alternative out there? How much does it cost per year? How much can a customer save with your soution? Put those numbers into a NPV model and pitch it to customers. Other question that come to mind are: what's the pain you're solving and who is the customer?
    • Redundant. It's pretty sad you have to get someone else to repost your comment for it to get modded up.
  • Interesting. For some reason I just can't see an industry dominated by the MPAA to get behind open source...
  • I'm in a similar situation. I've been developing Album Shaper for the last two years and the project is really starting to take off. I have many users on all major platforms but donations through the SourceForge site have been pathetic thus far. It would be really neat if a set of grants or something were constructed specifically to foster development of Open Source software. Sigh. If you want to support me feel free to visit the Album Shaper web site and let me know. ;-)
  • Accept donations from your customers, and encourage them to spread the word.

    It won't get much in the way of $ but it will get some seed money and will get that all-important buzz, which will make it easier to get "real money."

  • Dot Com Bubble (Score:5, Funny)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:18PM (#12482368)
    Do what they did back in the good ol' days of the dot com bubble: Come up with an idea that nobody wants, needs, or cares about. Then, create a corporation that has no assets. Write a press release about your product, which doesn't exist yet. Be sure to include a wide variety of terms from the IT bullshit generator. Supposing your company is called Inventri, your press release might begin, "Inventri today announced plans to begin development of its new software product, codenamed Widehorn." Be sure to include plenty of meaningless phrases, such as, "By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions." Make sure the bullshit-o-meter explodes. Describe, in colorful terms, how your company provides "solutions," but do not specify what kind of solutions or what they're for. Make sure this is printed on nice glossy paper with lots of whitespace and a variety of high-tech-looking colors. PHBs and other stupid people (hereinafter simply called "management") drool over this kind of crap. Then, a bunch of venture capitalists (hereinafter "rich idiots") will come along and dump millions of dollars on you, hoping to become the next Gill Bates. All you have to do at that point is take the money, buy a fancy office building, fill it with fancy mahogany office furniture, buy all the supplies, like post-it notes, kleenex boxes, refillable pens, and other such stuff, and then hire a bunch of MCSEs, pay them $200,000 a year, and buy a BMW for everyone, including yourself. Make sure your business practices are innovative, such as allowing nerf toys to be used at work, buying lunch for employees every friday, and providing all employees with a paid subscription to Slashdot. When them money runs out and no code has been written, simply close the company and start from the beginning. It's that simple!

  • Business Plan? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:19PM (#12482381)
    What I'm wondering, is, in your business plan, where did you suggest or think that the money was going to come from, and what happened to that revenue stream?

  • Sounds to me like a dead end... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:19PM (#12482386) Homepage
    "(...) Now we want to continue and to add more professional features, but alas this requires more funding. (...) Now, we searching for alternative solutions like sponsoring. Is there someone out there who can help us to keep the software free?"

    ...there's no commercial value in the project, but you still want to add features just for the hell of it? That's cool, but don't expect to get paid for it. What's the future of the project if you do not recieve funding? Abandon it so others can pick it up if they want to? Close the source (assuming you have all the copyrights)?

    I'm sorry, but if you're looking to get paid for it, you need a project someone is willing to pay *for*. If there was such a sponsoring foundation, I would suggest they use it to replace some central software many people use, like IE/Outlook/Office/Photoshop etc. I would consider spending it on such a niche system like tickets to be a very strange choice.

    Kjella
    • Right, the problem is that this was done all bass-ackwards - you need to find a market that exists first, whether you want to sell commercial software or open source software/services.

      If the market exists here, which it might, though it sounds like a modest-sized niche to me, then get companies that need this kind of software to pay you to implement the features they need. This is called "sales". It is the core of every software business. If you want to earn money on the project, then you need to sell i

  • There are a lot (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jvagner ( 104817 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:21PM (#12482400)
    ...of cheap, commercial solutions/services out there for this, but I do think some organizations would want to have this in-house, on their own servers, branded with their look and feel.

    I did a lot of ticket solution searching for a non-profit arts organization and never ran across this. Some higher visibility search engine and code repository (hotscripts, etc) entries would help visibility. Visibility will increase the chances of financial assistance.
  • Whatever sources get posted here are sure to dry up very quickly.

    This is one of those ways that the free market doesn't work.
  • I really someone with too much funds available reads this thread and sponsors you, but if not: Add as many advertisements as possible to the distribution site. If enough people use your software then they will inevitable be back to download upgrades and read the documentations, those surfers can be turned into money by adding enough advertisements. And do not be frightened to use some adult type of affiliate programs, a portion of your surfers are probably not visiting from work..
  • need to fill in to fully bring Open Source to the Enterprise.

    I believe that the day is coming where the companies making money from F/L/OSS will fund the Open Source projects that they make their consultancy/deployment/support/training money from.

    It makes sense - a proportion of their turnover could, and probably *should*, be fed back into the projects that enable them to exist.
    The proprietary vendors have their R&D budgets. Would not an analogous equivalent in our world be a 'no-strings-attached' fu

    • Why would they? If the product is as good as the developers say, and somebody's willing to develop it for free, why in the hell would anybody pay for it? Hell, in a business setting, if somebody "donated" money to an open source project, they'd be canned in a nanosecond. The only incentive would be if the product was crap and needed a lot of work.... in which case, why even bother with it? I guess that I'm not understanding where your "should" comes from.
    • I don't know about you, but I don't have unlimited funds. Unless someone (or some license agreement) MAKES me pay for something, I won't.
    • This is already beginning to happen. The money comes from sales of service and support, not from voluntary contributions.

      I would like to give you a real world example:

      In the company where I work we are selling a (closed source) mission critical J2EE application suited for thousands of simultaneous users.

      This application run on the Open Source (LGPL license) J2EE server JBoss [sourceforge.net]. The reason we selected JBoss instead on one of the many closed source competitors was quality, not price. The price of even t

    • " need to fill in to fully bring Open Source to the Enterprise."
      No not really the solution is already here. IBM uses it now.
      Lets think about this project as an example. How many small theaters know how to set MySQL, PHP, Apache, or a Linux server? Not many even know someone that can. Do they even really care what OS they use? Not at all. What they want is a solution. So keep giving away the source but offer a PRODUCT. Offer a system. A server, x number of workstations, a WAP, the printer, the bar code scann
  • Find a patron Organization that has the donors already in place and the willingness to spend the money to acquire the software. You are talking about a client base where the buildings rtun hundreds of millions, the money is already out there. There is a project much like this (closed source) called Tessitura that you might look into for ideas/inspiration. But as another poster pointed out... without a good solid business plan you can't expect venture capital to just come pouring in.
  • Is there someone out there who can help us to keep the software free?
    If they have already licensed it under the GPL, is it actually legal to "close" the source.

  • Besides the usual (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Besides getting it posted on Slashdot, you can apply for grants from IBM's research division, and believe it or not MSR ( Microsoft Research [microsoft.com]), so long as the project is able to be used by MS, and open source - e.g. BSD licensed. In the case of the latter, it has to specifically match their interests, whereas IBM are enthusiastic enough about open source to be far more liberal.

    I've had one of my own projects funded as part of my PhD at MIT by IBM. I wouldn't want to let M$ funding anywhere near my code and
    • ...you can apply for grants from IBM's research division, and believe it or not MSR...

      I can't find anything on the MSR web site... can you be a bit more specific?

  • "sponsoring"? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:35PM (#12482553)
    So, what do you mean by "sponsoring"? what does the person/company get in return? Or, by "sponsor", do you just mean "gullible person with extra money who has no interest in seeing and kind of return on it"?
  • I want money too, how do I get in on this. Sigh, if life were only so easy. You shouldn't have gone into open source with the idea of making money or becoming a business, but because you love working on that peice of software. Adding professional features doesn't require money, merely time and effort. If you are not willing to donate your own time and effort for free then why are you an open-source project?

  • Why (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @06:42PM (#12482626) Journal
    Ask yourself, why should you get the money over another OSS project? Who will benefit from your work, who will want to use it? Why should they pay you to do it?

    Work out who, when and why. Then focus on the "data" you pick up. Ring round and ask what the companies themselvs "want" from software and get it done ASAP so you can go "oh yes we have that, we're looking for funding and will offer support to anyone who donates x amount of money (say $500, it's nothing to a company) for 6 months. After that we're unsure of what we'll charge but it's unlikely to be much more. But obviously discounts for any who supported us in the early days".
  • I would suggest you seeking out associations of the kind of company that stands to benefit most from it. I assume such companies do not diferentiate themselves from competition by their back-offices.

    These associations may hold periodic meetings and thade shows. These events would be perfect places to seek funding from the association as a whole or to form a consortium to further develop your project.

    You could even use a mixed license model, where the entities that contribute gain access to more than the
  • This is, try to sell your development services to someone who needs the software you're developing. But instead of selling the software, sell the development and support. Of course you have to state that this is an open source project and that it won't be exclusive to them.
    • 1. If something as simple as this needs support, then it's really not a very good product.

      2. How do you know that there's no competititve advantage in this industry to using your own, specialized software, which you'd be giving up by using something open source?

      3. Are you saying that this person should hire themselves out as a programmer, but insist that they will only write open source software?

      • 1. If something as simple as this needs support, then it's really not a very good product.

        Even very easy to use programs need support for installation, upgrades, troubleshooting when Windows dies, and disaster recovery. Also, they mentioned development and support. If a company wants a new feature added, they can pay a reasonable amount and the coders will add it and everyone can then use it. Alternately, if all the copyrights are owned the program can be customized for individual companies and license

  • Basic economic principles drive OSS project funding just like everything else. First you need to find someone that has a demand for your product. Lacking that, you'll have to rely on philanthropy. I don't think there's much of that just for the sake of supporting OSS.
  • Almost wish after seeing this article that we could moderate articles on slashdot..
    maybe give the articles a "nerdfactor" or whatever (you know, tie in with that slogan up there)
    then we could view by daily nerdfactor.. that would be so much nicer to be able to moderate this whole new slough of these "paid" or "planted" articles that everyone seems to be noticing.
    In the last couple months, reading through the articles comments on plants, you will notice more and more people getting irritated with the PR arti
  • I think the MyThis and MyThat is as unoriginal now as iThis and iThat. It makes your project sound like a second year college CS project. Sure phpMyAdmin and the like are amazing, but they pioneered the phpMy thing, it's time for a new name!
  • Is the box office industry itself; potential beneficiaries from your project. Demonstrate to them how they might benefit, and they may wish to help. If your project has no demonstrable benefits to its vertical market, then you may want to rethink if it's really worthwhile. Especially consider what their requirements and needs may be, and this way you'll get perhaps something even more valuable than just money. I don't think it's fair to seek funding from a general donor such an open source fund if you have
  • This is not software that necessarily makes the world a better place to be a person; you don't deserve philanthropic sponsorship because there are many worthier causes that actually improve the state of life for many people. Even if you did deserve it, that sponsorship is rare unless you get to personally know someone at an organization that does such funding.

    Your customers would seem to be people running theatres. You need to find owners/managers that don't like what they're using/paying, build a relati

  • Dual licensing? (Score:4, Informative)

    by tomRakewell ( 412572 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @08:35PM (#12483504)
    I own a business, and I love open source software. It has been very useful to me.

    I have also spent the past two years developing an application to run my retail/mail order business. I have been able to phase out my proprietary ERP software, and I have asked myself... "should I open source this project?"

    Unfortunately, I can't think of a rational reason to do so. Open sourcing the project would allow it to develop faster. But it would also remove my competitive advantage -- it would be like giving my competitors a well-tuned piece of software to make running their business easier.

    I've spent an enormous amount of time trying to think of *rational* reasons to open source the project. I'd love the thought of waking up in the morning and reviewing patch submissions from dozens of competent programmers around the world. But wouldn't it be better to, um, hire some programmers to work on the project, and then sell licenses to use it?

    It would be better *for society* if the project were open sourced. It would be better *for me* if the project were proprietary.

    What kind of business model can you have that allows you to make a living off of writing open source software?

    You can "sell support." If you open source a project, and it is successful, then you (the developer and creator of the project) would be undoubtedly the world's number one expert on this software. Businesses wishing to deploy this software would be willing to pay YOU the developer to help install this software. When they had a problem, they would call YOU the developer to fix it. You can charge them nice hourly rates for your consulting.

    But a lot of businesses don't trust the open source software model, and I still think you'd be better off if you sold them licenses to use the software *and* sold them support.

    If you have a client-server architecture, maybe you could open source one half of the project. Consider open sourcing the server portion of an ERP system. If the project were successful, you would have a huge head start over all your competitors in providing a properietary, for-profit client. But you would need to be specialists in human interface development.

    Maybe you could do the reverse, and open source the client. Unlike the Microsoft model, provide a server with a very well-known public API so anyone can develop a client. Provide your client "free-of-charge" under an open source license. Submit a bunch of press releases about how your company is exploiting open source software.

    Unfortunately, then you have reduced open source to nothing more than a publicity stunt.

    I *hate* to say it, but the best way to really move a project like this forward might be to *close* source the project. You can certainly lowball the competition if you want, but for a mission-critical business application like this, what is really the advantage of open source? A company that earns a profit on the innovation is probably the best model for providing funding for this project.

    If you want to do the socially responsible thing AND make a profit, maybe you could investigate dual-licensing. Not-for-profit arts organizations could use your software under a GPL license (and I bet there are TONS of them that would take you up on this). If a commercial for-profit MOVIE THEATER wanted to use your software, on its merits, then sell them a license. You might get the best of both worlds -- essentially for-profit businesses would be subsidizing not-for-profits. AND your developers could earn a living.
    • Not-for-profit arts organizations could use your software under a GPL license (and I bet there are TONS of them that would take you up on this). If a commercial for-profit MOVIE THEATER wanted to use your software, on its merits, then sell them a license.

      Under the GPL, the non-profit arts organization can give it away to anyone they want for free. If you want to run it that way, you'd want the Qt model where there are some enterprise only features only available to paying customers. Or a non-commercial OS

  • follow the model of asterix (Score:3)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @08:46PM (#12483570) Homepage
    set up a small business that specializes in the installation and maintenence of your software, as it would seem that it requires a somewhat specialized hardware/software configuration.

    target businesses that could save money by using the open source software, and sell it just like you would anything else.

    chances are that most theatres have maintenence contracts with the software vendors they're currently using. They're not going to want to lose that, so you should probably offer that as well.

    This has worked very well for projects such as Asterix [asterisk.org], a linux-based telephony system.

    Your best bet would be to target small independent venues. Chances are that the larger chains run a package they developed in-house.

  • From an OSS developer who DOES have a sponsor... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yaztromo ( 655250 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @09:05PM (#12483687) Homepage Journal

    It's always great to hear from the /. peanut gallery of people who don't develop Open Source, who use lots of Open Source, but who don't generally donate any time, effort, or money to Open Source sound off on subjects like this, but maybe you'd like to hear from someone who is running an Open Source software project which does have a sponsor.

    My project, the jSyncManager [jsyncmanager.org], has had a (somewhat indirect) sponsor for the past six months. Basically, this sponsor (who runs a department at a large University) needed an Open Source, platform neutral solution for synchronizing PalmOS-based handheld systems in the healthcare field, and decided to use the jSyncManager. In turn, they hired me on as a consultant to the project, doing Open Source software development.

    This has been useful, as I've been doing Open Source development full time for the past year. It gives me a chance to work on my projects. The output I create for them is Open Source (GPL). And I have some funds I can now use towards the jSyncManager Project. They have also donated resources back to the jSyncManager Project.

    I'm not going to get rich off their funding and the resources they've donated (sending me new handheld hardware was a huge boost, for example) -- but it's more than enough to support the needs of the project.

    So please take a moment to take a look at their project (TAPAS) [sourceforge.net]. I would have continued jSyncManager development even without them, but their support has been a huge help, and has allowed me to do things like eat on a regular basis :).

    Brad BARCLAY
    Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
    The jSyncManager Project.

  • add more professional features? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) * on Monday May 09, 2005 @09:13PM (#12483738)
    Now we want to continue and to add more professional features, but alas this requires more funding.
    So try to act professional maybe? Calling your program phpMyTicket is pretty lame. Go to some big theater exec and tell them that name. You will be out the door in a second. What is with the "php" in the name? Do you really think _anyone_ that would actually _pay_ you for the software cares if it is based on PHP?
    The program is in advanced beta stage and was already used in production environment by us and by other people.
    Umm, you using it in your parents basement on your PIII doesn't count as a "production" environment, unless of course you own your own theater(s). Who are the "other people"? Mom, Dad and your auntie? Seriously, if you want to impress a company with some cash, you need to either be up front and tell them that "they will be the first 'large scale installation'", or you need to put out references that can be validated and not just "us and other people".
    Paypal and some other gateways are supported
    What other gateways? How many real theaters will be using Paypal? Cash or a major credit card please.
    The program is rather complex and big: we support online ticket shop, box office with thermal printer and control at doors with barcode scanner.
    There is nothing complex about an "online ticket shop". The same goes for the other items you mentioned. All of those functions can be implemented in a day or so or more likely for a company buying software, as a ready to go package. Maybe instead of trivial "geek" features, try to implement PHB features. How about your "Star Ticket Box System" implements all the tax rates of every zip code in the USA. Wow! Hey some PHB for one of the major theater companies may get all wet over that! Most companies that _can_ pay for custom software do not have simple needs like "you can order a ticket!". They want and expandable, modular system that can grow with their needs (even if your software currently cannot grow with their needs, tell them it can and then make sure you deliver).
    We tried support, installation and customization, and also a commercial license, but there are just not enough requests.
    Gee, I wonder why?

    Some of my post may have sounded harsh, however I wrote it to help you. I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500, multi-billion dollar company. I have pulled more hair out then you can imagine on the type of software that our PHB's have purchased. It _all_ comes down to PRESENTATION. Some of the "packages" that our PHB's have purchased have been total crap. One of our PHB's spent over $10,000 on a few little Flash demo's (less than 60 seconds each) about how to do basic computer tasks like using a mouse, keyboard, etc! Any graphics dude with about 1-2 months of Flash could have done it. However, the company that sold this "solution" has some business-style and didn't really sell a product, instead they learned what this PHB wanted and made him think he got it!

    Learn from this. Make your product as modular as possible. Drop the stupid geek name. What the hell is "phpMyTicket"? Come up with a name that will make some PHB think they are getting a total "ticketing solution". Even if your product is not there yet, make the PHB think it is. Ask the PHB what he is looking for and assure him that your product will deliver (even if it currently does not). This way you get a software sale as well as a consulting sale to "customize" the software for this business.

    Good luck!

    • Dear AstroDrabb,

      What the fuck are you doing working as a Senior Programmer? There's a home in our marketing department for you, which comes with a high six-figure salary and a 40 hour work week!

      - Delacroix Winthrop III
      CEO, Multi-Billion Dollar Fortune 500 Company
  • I (and i suspect others with me) don't own a credit card. Since most online donations require some form of credit card, i will never be able to donate money to such projects. Even if the minimum amount is something i can easily afford, i won't donate if the method is too difficult.

    But recently i saw something else; a phone number that costs and gives you a (registration-) code, which you use to register the product.

    Now for me, this is perfect. I don't need a credit card, and calling a phone number that
  • Isn't that obvious?
    Or did I miss something?
    I'm working with an OSS project that is sponsored by the industry ( www.xical.org ) and various partners working on and with it. All are interessted in results. It's got a fairly good branding and the people working on it are good at selling their services. The rest is a piece of cake.
    Curiously enough, I have the impression that the customers I'm dealing with couldn't care less if it were OSS or not. They want professional expertise on a solution to a problem they
  • You want to develop this as open source so how can you make money on open source?

    Treat it like a business. Do not think how can I convince people to GIVE you money. Think what can I sell them.

    What about turn key systems? Your software on a simple Linux Box with the printer and bar code scanner all in one nice neat little package.

    Market the on line part as a service. You offer to manage there on line presence at least as far as the ticket sales goes for X a year. Throw in a nice website if you like just f
  • Why do you need sponsors exactly? If this is a commercial venture, then sell the software.

    If it's not commercial, then it doesn't have to make money, so you can work on it in your spare time and I don't understand why you'd need funding for a hobby project. Sounds like nice work if you can get it!

    If it really *is* a commercial venture, then I'd have to question your business model if you need external "sponsorship" before you can make any money at it.

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