Finding Sponsors for an Open Source Project? 209
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?"
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Donations vs funding (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:Donations vs funding (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Donations vs funding (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Donations vs funding (Score:2)
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
Re:Donations vs funding (Score:2)
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.
Re:Donations vs funding-A Whim-sical tale. (Score:2)
Theaters (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Theaters (Score:5, Interesting)
you could always try... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:you could always try... (Score:1)
Why, why, why? (Score:4, Interesting)
"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)
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.
Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2)
Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2)
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:Ah, of course! (Score:2)
Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Sponsoring an OSS project involves quite a bit more control than what you suggest. Look at Digium sponsoring Asterisk, IBM sponsoring Eclipse, Canonical sponsoring Ubuntu: In all of these cases, the sponsor has a great deal of ability to guide the project's development into what they want it to be.
Thinking this would be any different is naiive -- on your part, and (if they think otherwise) theirs as well.
Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2)
Tell that to the Alamo Drafthouse [originalalamo.com].
Well, that's why they need to have a mostly-working solution in place already, to make it clear that their solution will work for the potential sponsor with some customization.
Re:Why, why, why? (Score:2, Funny)
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)
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
Wrong approach (Score:2)
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)
EG: You have 5 people interested, each person contributes $100, when all 5 people contribute the $100 then the money is unlocked and you can use that to finance the development of the feature.
Re:Use fundable (Score:2)
Re:Use fundable (Score:2)
This sounds like a pyramid scheme...
As compared to the M$ 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
Or a bonus system (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
Re:what's the commercial solution (Score:1)
Re:what's the commercial solution (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:what's the commercial solution (Score:2)
What an idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What an idea... (Score:2)
For comparison, look at http://www.sql-ledger.org/ [sql-ledger.org] and http://www.digium.com/ [digium.com]
Sell it. (Score:2)
Re:Sell it. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sell it. (Score:2)
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...
Re:Sell it. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sell it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting your desired features added exactly as you want them, and not having to pay for all the functionality that's already finished (as you would if you were hiring it done ground-up) or feaures funded by someone else.
What's the competing product (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:What's the competing product (Score:2)
Re:What's the competing product (Score:2)
A few weeks ago I moderated someone's post "troll" because he copied another poster's comment 100% from another
About a week later I got killed in M2 and my troll mod was found "unfair". People complain about mods so much but if I see another case of plaguarism I'm modding it overrated.
Open Source in the Movie Industry (Score:2)
Similar situation (Score:1)
Ask your customers for donations (Score:1)
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)
Additional word to use: (Score:5, Funny)
Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999 (Score:2)
Great idea. All we need now is a machine to take us back to the days when people actually gave out money like that.
Business Plan? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Business Plan? (Score:1)
Re:Business Plan? (Score:1)
Re:Business Plan? (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds to me like a dead end... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Sounds to me like a dead end... (Score:2)
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)
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.
it isn't to send everyone thundering that-a-way (Score:1)
This is one of those ways that the free market doesn't work.
Just add PPS and PPC advertisements!? (Score:2)
Re:Just add PPS and PPC advertisements!? (Score:2)
This points to one of the pieces of the puzzle we (Score:2)
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? (Score:2)
Mod Parent as "Funny" (Score:2)
Re:This points to one of the pieces of the puzzle (Score:2)
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
Re:This points to one of the pieces of the puzzle (Score:2)
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
There are already pools of money... (Score:1)
How can you make it "not free"? (Score:2)
Re:How can you make it "not free"? (Score:2)
Sure, if they are the copyright owners. But of cause, they cant "take back" the stuff that was already released under the GPL.
Re:How can you make it "not free"? (Score:2)
Besides the usual (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Besides the usual (Score:2)
I can't find anything on the MSR web site... can you be a bit more specific?
"sponsoring"? (Score:3, Insightful)
ooh ooh (Score:2)
Why (Score:4, Insightful)
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".
Trade shows and associations (Score:1)
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
Find possible clients then (client = sponsor) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Find possible clients then (client = sponsor) (Score:2)
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?
Re:Find possible clients then (client = sponsor) (Score:2)
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 Economics (Score:1)
moderate articles... (Score:2)
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
Stop using "My" in your app name first off.. (Score:2)
The obvious answer (Score:2)
You need to figure out who your customers are. (Score:2)
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)
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.
Danger Will Robinson.... (Score:2)
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)
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)
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)
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!
Re:add more professional features? (Score:2)
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
Re:add more professional features? (Score:2)
however "Oracle" sounds more new age, and is doing a lot better. do you remember their fierce marketing when they first arrived? killed off many superior databases simply down to a better PR departmant. it was like Beta vs VHS all over again.
postgresql is supposed to be better than MySQL, but i have no idea how to pronounce it. neither do many oth
Make it as easy as possible (Score:2)
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
Errrm, ... maybe find a customer? (Score:2)
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
Some suggestions. (Score:2)
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 sponsors? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Sell it (Score:1)
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:5, Informative)
python is great, but I really prefer php in it's natural environment, alongside apache.
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2)
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2, Interesting)
The main difference between a script kiddy playing with a ticking server and the mob doing it is that the scrip kiddy will get a free ticket (so the money doesn't add but) but the mob will end up repricing the tickets they want to scalp
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2)
What are these "php hacks" you speak of? Do you mean vulnerabilities? The PHP project is OSS and has a full-disclosure policy.
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2)
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2)
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:4, Insightful)
there are other reasons why most php scripts end up being spaghetti code.
Re:We really don't care for php applications (Score:2)
You can still "grab back" control of GPLed code... (Score:3, Insightful)
Troll or not, I'm going to use it as an opportunity to say this:-
If you own the entire copyright to GPLed code, you can do what the heck you like with it, including releasing it under a non-GPL license.
Of course, you can't stop people distributing and expanding the original code under the GPL. And unless you can get the permission of all contributors, you can't "un-GPL" new v
Re:Ah, my favorite part of OSS (Score:2)