Funding Open Source? 264
An Open Investment...
Luke asks: "Open Investment is a concept whereby Open Source principles are applied to making money. Open Investment is inspired by recent articles and diary entries, on Advogato, lamenting the lack of funding of strategic projects. Eric S. Raymond's 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' papers describe how Open Source projects get off the ground by starting as a programmer's itch turning into something useful to other people.
What if there are strategically important projects that just take too long to ever get off the ground, such as
an Open Exchange replacement? With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?
The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to
encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into
their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that
happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.
For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.
Who wants to give it a shot?"
...for a Common Situation?
Yaztromo asks: "I'm the project administrator and lead developer for an Open Source project that brings PalmOS handheld synchronization to Java-enabled platforms, called the jSyncManager.
I started the project back in 1997 for personal use (the full history of the project as available here), and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.
So I've been at this for 8 months, with some success, but am getting to the point where two things concern me:
- How do I best market my project?
- How can I raise funds to help continue the project?
How have you raised your Open Source projects public profile (particularly if it isn't something that is of general use), and how have you gone about obtaining funding to help take care of those annoying little costs that creep up along the way?"
Gee... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Gee... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gee... (Score:2)
It all works until (Score:2, Insightful)
My $2.
Yes, but use imagination and professionalism... (Score:3, Insightful)
However the kiddie cannot go on site to install things, the kiddie cannot offer service contract, the kiddie cannot talk to the user professionally, the kiddie cannot document system properly...
If you show professionalism in your 'free' work you can turn it into money and not worry about the 'kiddies'.
Re:It all works until (Score:4, Interesting)
some god damn kiddie does the same thing it took you 4 years to do, in two months and gives it aways for free. Nope. Hobbists always win.
Having once been one of those kiddies, I can say that this only really applies to the most simple applications.
The jSyncManager looks deciptively simple on the outside (on purpose -- we have a very good GUI developer who takes HCI stuff pretty seriously involved in the project), but it's inner workings are more complicated. Its multi-threaded, object oriented protocol stack is beyond even the most talented "kiddie".
It's an exceedingly difficult thing to "get right", in part because no official protocol specs have ever been published.
Anyhow, for us that has never been a fear or concern. A bigger concern is that at some point in the future Palm will simply drop their synchronization protocol altogether, or make it significantly more difficult for us to reverse engineer.
Yaz.
Re:It all works until (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called competition. It's something that exists in the Real World.
Seriously, if you have a product that can be replaced in 2 months via current tools, your products value has diminished to the point where maybe you should make a new product.
Hell, if tools are so good that someone can do it in two months, maybe its time for a rewrite of the codebase so you can cut costs and out market, out sell, and out business the "damned kiddie"
If you are so lethargic that a random kid can write something in two months that has the capability to put you out of business, you deserve to go out of business.
Just look at the gaming market (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the OP was being drastic about "script kiddies" but I often find myself looking for Open Source solutions to replace expensive alternatives.
I think the point he was trying to make was that:
We complain about the lack of jobs available and then go on and on about how great FREE software is. Hypothetical situation Linux takes the desktop by storm, Windows goes down the tubes. Thousands of workers are out of jobs at Microsoft. Not only did thousands of job positions disappear but now you have thousands of people looking for new jobs.
1000+ more people out of work 1000+ less job positions to be filled.
Open Source replaces paid jobs that are covered by the profits created by the product with jobs that need some other way to cover the bills.
Here's the trade-off:
Closed source = few developers but cost of production is distributed over many customers
Open source = many developers but cost of production is distributed over a few wealthy friends
There's plenty of free software floating around but there's not much free money.
If the Open Source model isn't supporting your costs, then you need to start charging the customers. Companies tend to make investments, not give grants. And both are very difficult to get.
Open Source software needs to plan in advance for the possibility that they will need to charge for their product to cover costs. Going out whinning that nobody donated isn't going to fix things.
I liked having a totally free huge web-site that many many people utilized but there was no way I was promising it would stay that way. And of course it didn't. Free is nice but free don't pay the bills.
Project needs money? Charge for the download. Problem solved. If someone else wants to host it and not charge the fee, great. The idea of the charge is to cover bandwidth. If it's not costing you bandwidth then you don't need to get a return on it.
If the problem is more than the cost of bandwidth then you need to find a job that pays real money and work on the project that doesn't pay you on the side.
Ben
Re:Just look at the gaming market (Score:3, Insightful)
1000+ more people out of work 1000+ less job positions to be filled.
You're forgetting that 90% of the software in the world is not shrinkwrapped, commercial softwa
Re:Just look at the gaming market (Score:2, Insightful)
You're forgetting that 90% of the software in the world is not shrinkwrapped, commercial software, it's custom software, usually for in-house use.
Source?
-a
Re:It all works until (Score:4, Insightful)
Cry me a fucking river. It's called competition. It's something that exists in the Real World. Seriously, if you have a product that can be replaced in 2 months via current tools, your products value has diminished to the point where maybe you should make a new product.
I can't read the OP's mind, but I do think you are oversimplifying the matter. Let's say you have an idea for some kind of innovation. Say a better type of web browser. You spend 4 years researching the idea, gaining seed capital, and developing the whole browser including your innovation. Meanwhile the damned kiddie just copies your idea and spends 2 months kludging it on to Mozilla. It crashes half the time, but who cares cuz it's free. Eventually, some other altruistic soul will take the time to debug it.
-a
Open Investment? (Score:2, Funny)
Ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I think Yaztromo just solved his problem #1 - by getting his question posted on Slashdot, I don't think he'll have any trouble marketing his project now, assuming it's any good. I'm interested in #2 as well, though - raising funds to accelerate development. I'm the lead developer of Audacity [sourceforge.net], and I've been thinking recently of various ways we might be able to raise money to pay a full-time developer:
1. Lots of small donations, targeted at specific features. Simple to set up, but how likely is it that any one particular feature would get enough funding to really pay for its development?
2. Corporate sponsorship - anyone out there successfully gotten a corporate sponsor for an open-source project before? How did you approach them? How much will they try to control how the money is used?
3. Non-profit grant - we could write a proposal to add a large, significant, but specialized feature, such as making Audacity optimized for blind users, or creating a version for kids, and then find an appropriate charityto fund it.
Anyone had luck with any of these approaches? Other ideas?
Mixed licensing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or the club. Mandrake or WineX style. Members get to vote on what features get more focus.
I've been thinking about this more and more from the other side of the coin, as a young OSS user who would like to support developers *and* would like to see more polished projects.
Audacity is a great example of a really cool open source project that could also use a little shine. One way or the other its a terrific project (if you haven't guessed, I'm a user).
We need a main group to set it up. (Score:2)
We need a group to setup a site. I should be able to click on a link and then click join OpenSource or whatever. Then I pay $5 a month and I fund open source development. I pay for votes transgaming style.
Me and the other paying users vote on where the money goes, programmers can sign up and get money to develop certain applications or services, and we can set up bounties, where programmers can accept.
When the code reaches beta we review it to make sure it works, and when its finished they get paid.
Tran
Re:Mixed licensing? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about mixed licensing? Main project becomes a commercial project (with expected enhancments, gui, stability) and feeds back into the pool after so long.
I've been thinking about a similar idea, but instead of mixed licensing, I'd keep the GPL/LGPL mix we're currently using, but sell a version that is wrapped into a friendly installer.
One of the big problems we currently have is that there are a variety of libraries the user requires. Some of these (like jDOM and jUSB) are Open Source, and we can include them. Others (like the Java Communications API) can be redistributed for some platforms, but not for others. Regardless, currently it is up to the users to find, download, and install these pre-requisites before running the jSyncManager. And for some users, this is quite a bit of effort.
I'm currently thinking of creating some pre-packaged installable versions that use platform-specific installers, that include all the libraries we pre-req that we can get free redistribution rights for. These packages could be sold with bundled priority e-mail technical support for a year (or somesuch).
RedHat and others seem to do well with this model in the Linux world, so it could work for us. Making it easier for users to get the jSyncManager running would certainly be an added benifit.
Yaz.
Re:Mixed licensing? (Score:2)
Lets put it this way. If I had the ability to pay nothing or a something and the difference was an installer then I would pay nothing.
I was at OSCON last week and heard Tim OReilly talk about the three C's. (Commodization of software, User Customizable Systems, Network Enabled Collaboration) Essentially the commodization provided by Open So
Like WineX? (Score:2)
WineX gives you voting, nicely packaged releases and propreitary extentions. Basically you end up with a very proffesional package at a reasonable price.
Of course you can get it for free, but only some of it and you have to compile and install it yourself.
I think OSS is growing beyond its original roots and projects are becoming mor
Re:Mixed licensing? (Score:2)
Ok, so why are you not using Windows or MacOSX? Because in essence that is what you are arguing. People are using LINUX and other pieces of the software because they are TOO cheap to pay for Windows. Sure some folks say it is for other reasons. AND if you are paying for Windows or MacOSX then why would you use the software in question? Because there are already pay for software variants that do that job quite well.
My point with Open Source is that it is essentially imp
Open source serving niche markets (Score:2)
Re:Mixed licensing? (Score:2)
Ok, so why are you not using Windows or MacOSX? Because in essence that is what you are arguing. People are using LINUX and other pieces of the software because they are TOO cheap to pay for Windows.
But then how do companies such as RedHat, which charge for their Linux distros, make any money?
People _do_ pay for Linux distros on CD-ROM to alleviate them from having to download the ISOs and burn a CD set themselves.
Based on your logic, all for-pay Linux distros need not exist, because we could all go out
Re:Mixed licensing? (Score:2)
They look at my tools and say, wow, cool. I say, yupe, but it costs. At that point many just say, yeah, tool X is good enough for me.
What I see is that those that are on Windows and MacOSX tend to be people who can be coaxed to cough up money. (But then again I also use Windows with Linux). People on Linux, tend not to want to
The thing that gets me.. (Score:2)
- Is it commercial.
- Does it offer support.
- How long are upgrades included.
- Does it do what I need.
"Its free!" is not the right answer here.That said they love Mozilla.
Re:The thing that gets me.. (Score:2)
So, charge them $2000 for RHAS.
Charge them $1000 for PostgreSQL.
Charge them for the development work.
They'll thank you for providing them with such a great service for such a low cost.
If you say the first two items are free they wi
Corporate Sponsorship...One Plan... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am certain slashdotters see the future of democracy is the net...and that open source software is the key to increasing the amount and quality of democracy [I posted an article about the first use of Internet voting in an election in North America which will take place in Markham
Re:Corporate Sponsorship...One Plan... (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Sponsorship...One Plan... (Score:2)
Go to meetup.com and search for slashdot...
To save you a bit of trouble...4th Thrusday of every month at Futures Bakery on Bloor at 7pm. Next one is July 24.
Re:Corporate Sponsorship...One Plan... (Score:2)
Re:Corporate Sponsorship...One Plan... (Score:2)
I guess the biggest difference is that I plan to get OpenPolicy up quickly and form a federal political party here in Canada [The Distributed Party of Canada - Canada's first regionless political party] and run candidates in the federal election next year.
OpenVote won't happen for some time yet, for the very problems mentioned in the article you pointed to.
Actually forming a distributed political party and building a consensus policy online and running candidates is the bes
Royalties via Collection and Distribution pts (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider the following:
Company XYZ launches an OSDN like websight that maintains a dependency graph of open-source projects (e.g. FOO project depends on code from X,Y,Z and libraries V,W).
The community can vote on and manage those dependencies and their relative importance. Any entry in the project database only lists it's direct dependencies (which themselves may have others). The system will self-organize and may require some interesting checks and balances but could be done.
The system perhaps begins as a donation website to "donate" to projects that you want to support, but could very quickly mobilize marketing to lobby companies that use projects to donate to those projects, etc...
The company running the website takes a commission from every "donation" or payment. We want this. This incents that company to continue and keeps it in business.
The balance after the commission is split 50% / 50% between the project principals and the dependencies. The 50% going to the dependencies is split according to the voted importance of those dependencies on the project. For each dependency, 50% is taken for that project and the other 50% split amongst it's dependencies,
All proceeds that go to project principals are really just numbers in accounts on the website associated with open-source projects, and while eventually it may make sense to do further breakdowns according to project members, in the beginning, the company running the website could just issue a check on a periodic basis to whomever the agreed-upon organization or person is that is associated with that project.
If you allow this model to evolve over time and provide the company running the website with enough financial motivation (e.g. good commissions), it is highly likely that it would become a mobilizing force for raising funds for projects.
But the best part would be that open-source authors could collect royalty checks for many years for their work, much like book-authors do.
This model may not be perfect, but I think with the right company and a willingness to evolve this basic model into something that fits with community needs, it could become a powerful force for rewarding and compensating open-source contributors.
Re:Royalties via Collection and Distribution pts (Score:2)
As much as I love glib, gtk and QT, I think other projects are in less healthy financial situations: the dependencies idea would give most money to ancient, established libraries.
Of course, I'm too tired to think of a better model. An 80-20 split?
Use a bounty. (Score:2)
Have people vote on a specific feature. Set your rate which you expect people to pay for that feature, and then have people pay.
The other way is via membership, like what the EFF does.
But in my opinion there should be some centralized open source funding group which everyone can join, instead of divide evverything.
Re:Ideas (Score:2)
I'm getting a $2000 stipend from my university [csuchico.edu] to work on my project [ilohamail.org] this summer. All I had to do was write a proposal [ilohamail.org]. I also entered the project to a student research competition and got $200 in prize money ($200 for a 5 page paper and two 10 minute presentations isn't that bad -would've been $500 if I'd gotten 1st place though). Apart from that, I got a $1000 "donation" to add a new feature, about $200 worth in contract work related to the project, an
Re:Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
A user of the product would like feature X, and they are willing to pay $5 for it. He can put the details and pay the money, which is held in trust. Whoever is responsible for the feature being added then would be paid a bounty for the feature, in this case $5. If you had many people asking for a particular feature then you could end up with quite a few $$$ allocated to a feature. It would also make it easier to priotise the features to be added to t
Re:Ideas (Score:2)
Tax deductible? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tax deductible? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tax deductible? (Score:2)
Software in the Public Interest Inc. (Score:2, Informative)
Yes: Public Software Fund (Score:4, Informative)
-russ
Google Adsense is one option (Score:5, Informative)
The benefit of this is it doesn't infringe on any ethical issues.. such as.. this company gave me $1000 and asked for 'X feature' which might harm the program's reputation.. should I add it? should I not?
Something to at least assist... (Score:3, Informative)
An example of this is the various 802.11* projects for different chipsets. Originally
Get together on your mailing lists, and buy the developer some hardware. That way, they have more of what they need to work with in order to make use of their programming skills.
Have compiler, will travel? (Score:4, Funny)
How to get funded... (Score:5, Insightful)
Give them a percentage of the enterprise
Give them whatever support they need to raise money regardless of how stupid or irrelevant you personally think it may be
Don't confuse ownership with control
Focus on being rich, not on being king
Don't underestimate release engineering (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of things like
- A commercial free based spin off
- form company for services etc, or total solution provider
- consultant
- books
I'm in a open source project, and nearly tried them all. While true that they are possible, they only tend to work for very high profile projects.
Moreover, you'll need several manyears worth of polishing to even qualify.
You didn't know? (Score:2)
All Open Source developers eat at soup kitchens and sleep at the YMCA between welfare cheques. Well.. not all; Theo de Raadt is too cool for that.
funding via hardware/software symbiosis (Score:5, Informative)
Several Open Source projects are nicely funded doing the same thing. Take for instance the OSS telephone project Asterisk [asteriskpbx.org]. The software is made available to enable more people to buy and use a particular telephone line interface card. Other cards are supported in the software, but the sponsoring company's is obviously supported first.
So, one avenue is to partner with a hardware maker, in the case of the PC to PDA sync, partner with an up-and-coming desktop hardware manufacturer, or a similar PDA maker.
Sponsorships! (Score:5, Interesting)
One word: sponsorships.
No, I'm not talking about T-shirts with your project's name on them... although if you think that will help, go for it. I'm talking about finding companies that will actively sponsor your development.
For instance, my company [simpli.biz] has been in talks with both the PHP project and the PostgreSQL project about sponsorship. (We haven't officially contacted the Postgres team, but we will for our August advertising budget.) We're happy to sponsor open-source projects for two reasons: one, we use these projects to make money, and two, because people who are interested in a particular project are often looking for a company that offers support for that particular project.
There are lots of open-source projects out there that have referral links or sponsorships from companies that use that project to make money. For us, sponsorship is huge, since we want to become well-known in "niche" markets like PostgreSQL web hosting, as opposed to the generic and overblown "virtual web hosting" category.
So approach companies that make products that depend on your project and ask them to sponsor it. You may find a company that uses your project to make money is more than a little happy to kick back $50/month for a banner ad or text link on your project's website. Don't be afraid to ask!
Supply v Demand fails in open source (Score:2)
You can still be profitable if you have some value added service provided with the product. You can't really have any benefits within the product itself as it is open source, but you may be able to offer support for your item.
Red Hat capitalized on something similar, as early versions of linux w
Excellent article: Open Source Economics (Score:4, Interesting)
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/200104120062
It is about Open Source Economics, money from open source, and what are some economics-related myths about open source.
Though it is not "exactly" relevant to this topic, it talks about related issues.
Re:Excellent article: Open Source Economics (Score:2)
I have to question the description of this article as "excellent." Rather than describing how open source can and does participate in economics, every question is answered with a dismissal. The conclusion itself is a dismissial:
Re:Excellent article: Open Source Economics (Score:2)
Look at the section under "Open Source is not economically viable." He says that everyone's focusing on the supply side too much to see that demand will inevitably force suppliers into adopting OSS. The problem is that if you start sell
Service contracts! (Score:3)
The real money is in recurring charges, not one offs. So offer consultancy and service contracts. Free software has the allure of being a low up-front cost, and this means you can actually sell them recurring costs which probably would have cost more than then buying decent proprietary software anyway!
Still, it's a good money maker.. just offer support on your systems/code/application.. and cash in on your hard work.
Idea (Score:4, Funny)
2. Offer to sell it for $XXXX to a buyer under any Open Source license they both agree upon.
3. Profit!
(Uh oh, something's wrong, where should the "???" go?)
Re:Idea (Score:2)
"Buyer" could be anything
Develop markettable project (Score:2)
But it is a fact of the industry.
As noted in the story, the OSS projects usually start because a developer had an itch. The reason to start a project may be "just because I can", doing something different and innovative, this feature is not available in current applictions or I want it in a different way. If what you are developing is not available already then there may be a market for it. So once you get over the itch, try developing something that has demand in the market. Its same as dev
Open Investment? (Score:2, Interesting)
Our company looked at developing and releasing open source products based on the "Tall Emu" public licence (for want of a better name).
The concept was basically to sell the product as a non-free solution until such time as milestones were met (revenue, units sold, whatever).
These terms were to be included in the licence.. something along the lines of "This licence w
Funding == Get a day job :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, I have a tiny open source project that no one's ever heard of, but I've been working on it for a few years and have tried various things.
Two parts to this, I guess. One, starting out, requiring a link back (or just asking for one) ends up with a bunch of sites promoting your work. This can raise the public profile of your project, because all the people who see the link and think the app is cool come running over to your project page. There are other ways to do it, of course. (submit to Slashdot anyone?) There's also Freshmeat and other free software directories to get the word out.
I'm really sad to say that the problem with funding, as I see it, is that a lot of the time, the funding just isn't out there unless you have something big and in wide use, like an O/S, or a popular server (Apache, Sendmail, MySQL), or something that is tending toward apps that would be used in a business environment. Also, a really really useful app where an equivalent doesn't exist has the potential to attract funding as well.
You can solicit donations, but my experience is, most of the people who are going to use the application in a serious commercial environment or to help them make a profit donate zip. People who will be using it for personal use and can't afford to donate often donate a couple of bucks. People who demand free technical support because they don't wanna read the manual RIGHT NOW DAMMIT don't generally donate anything either.
Donations aren't generally a good business model.
(Unless you can get tax exempt status...but I digress.)
Really, it seems that one needs a sales manager or an evangelist -- someone who really enjoys going out and *selling* the project. Not in the sense of "buy this software," but in the sense of, "Hey, Mr. Corporation/Investment entity -- if you invest in this it'll be really cool and people will love you and your stock will go up to the heavens! Yay!"
But most of us just want to sit around and code -- the sales thing just isn't attractive. One option I've explored is finding a salesy kind of person I can trust, and asking them to take on that kind of thing for a split of the "take." That has worked pretty well on a small scale, so I'm pursuing it more. If you're a coder who is also salesy, so are extremely lucky and talented. If not, find a buddy and make them do the evangelization.
In the meantime, get a day job and work on your project in your off hours. That's all the funding I've needed so far.
We already have the tax exempt status (Score:2)
-russ
Re:Funding == Get a day job :-) (Score:2)
Or, get a job where your boss is an ex-GNU-software and embedded systems consultant whose philosophy is "Always give back to the community whenever possible."
There are actually a few companies out there who support open source and are supportive of their people working on it in their spare time, even if those companies aren't themselves in the software business.
Not many...
But a f
LinuxFund, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LinuxFund, anyone? (Score:2)
Re:LinuxFund, anyone? (Score:2)
The Linux Fund Master Card Application [applyonlinenow.com] has the details.
Just sell it! (Score:3, Funny)
So just sell the software! You'll go broke, but at least you can hang out with the FSF groupies in the unemployment line.
p.s. The FSF itself does NOT say this, only those who think RMS is their savior, but never bothered to read any of his writings.
p.p.s. And of course, if you're the typical slashdot reader, you still won't get it. So let me spell it out: you can't make a living selling Free Software by itself.
Keep your original goals and objectives in mind. (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) Hard Work
(2) Free Time
I have a slight issue with funding Open Source because it's kind of like Why don't I just buy a license instead? How is donating any different?
As for getting your name out there, make sure your product fulfils a needed gap. If it's a "free" alternative to an expensive product, make sure people who need to use the product are aware of it.
But most of all, if your project was originally merely because you need it, don't let it get out of hand in size and scope. Keep that goal in your mind, and remember that that is your purpose.
As an example, I'm working with a group right now that started out fulfiling a needed gap in the education at my college. But now they're trying to move to being a non-profit company, and raising "investment capital." Don't ask about the how some people on the project think those entities can co-exist. The truth is, it's tough for them to. And the project is starting to grow exponentially before it's ready, and the original goal of fulfilling the gap in the education is now second priority to making money.
Re:Keep your original goals and objectives in mind (Score:4, Interesting)
4.) domain names
5.) server hardware
For some people, $50+ per month can be quite a pinch.
Frequently, the need for money comes when some developer has a financial crunch and is faced with the need to work more paid hours. He can either resign from the project or ask for money.
Another common case is that the user and developer base grows and bottlenecks appear. Examples include mailing list moderation, design lead, and software repository moderation. Sometimes, these bottlenecks require someone to commit a significant chunk of time to the project. When this happens, the developers as a whole fish around for both money and someone gullible enough to drop their real job and work on the project full time.
In the end, its a developer's dream to nurture his project that leads to the desire to let it grow and the consequent need for more funding.
Re:Keep your original goals and objectives in mind (Score:2, Interesting)
These are exactly the sorts of little costs that have currently cropped up -- internet costs.
We've done well for some of these things -- we're using the webspace SourceForge provides for our project, for example. But domain registration still costs, as does our mailmap system.
And the project has become big enough that I can quite easily spend an entire 8+ hour day working on it, and I frequently do. As the lead developer and the project administrator and the primary project evangelist and primary techni
projects are the R&D lab of free software vend (Score:2)
Unlike a "high on a hill" lab owned by some big company, our R&D is cheaper/faster/better -- but it ain't free. In my case, and many others, the funding is falls below the costs.
We need two things: _Will_ (self interested one could argue) from the vendors to pay the bills. _Mechanism_, to arrange that payment (not merely "paypal buttons" -- higher level mechanism, so that the vendors are assured technology transfer an
How the POPFile project runs... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Money
All the money I get from POPFile is through donations made through Amazon.com or PayPal. This brings in enough money to keep me *very* interested in the project, although it does not cover the rent at this point. However as POPFile's user base grew I saw donations grow with I would estimate around 10% of users donating an average of $20.
2. Marketing
I spend no money on marketing, but I am *very* nice to any press that want information on POPFile. They are your friend since they will advertise your product for free if you can get them to write about it. The key to getting them to write about it is to think of the "hook" that they will use. All writers have a "hook" or key idea in the story that they are writing about. If you can relate your product to a hook then you can get them to write about it. In the case of POPFile the hook is spam. Although POPFile is designed for generic email processing it's good at fighting spam too and so I work with writers who deal with the spam problem and they in turn mention POPFile.
On a related note I'd say that the free (as in beer) nature of free (as in speech) software is also a big plus for journalists. There's nothing like recommending a product to their readers that is free.
3. Be Nice To People
Word of mouth is very important to any product (commercial or not) and that means answering every single email you get. I read every message in the POPFile forums and answer every email sent directly to me. This is vital because people then realize that the community around POPFile is welcoming and they feel more comfortable using the tool.
John.
A couple of ways... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, by the time you have become 'independently wealthy', you will probably be old, decrepit and be only be able to use the money to pay for a better funeral (or leave it to a bunch of spoilt brats who will spend the rest of their lives fighting each other over the inheritance).
Forget about all this crap. Just get on and live the life you want to live *NOW*. If you want to put more time into developing opensource stuff, just get on and do it, even if it means compromising in other, less important, parts of your life (like being enslaved to becoming financially independent). While you figure out all those complicated plans, your body is busy dying.
Leverage the open source reputation (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the project is open source many people are using it and my knowledge of spam went up, because of that I got invited to the MIT Spam Conference. Because of that I'm now a paid consultant for ActiveState on their Anti-spam Task Force. I never would have be
Get companies who need the software involved (Score:2)
Of course, this isn't useful for Palm-syncing software, since I
How to market open-source (Score:4, Insightful)
Word of mouth advertising is the only real way for an independent project to get off the ground. If you have a good product, then people will use it. You can add lots of momentum by getting hosted by an organization like Apache or Tigris.org.
What it comes down to is having a stable product with a good user-interface, if applicable, good support, good distribution (not just makefiles, but rpms or installer software), good logging, etc.
The perfect book to describe all of this is Luke Hohmann's latest book Beyond Software Architecture [amazon.com], which I would highly recommend. It goes into great detail to explain how to develop software that people will want to use, open source or not.
Anyway, the quality of the product is first and foremost in open-source because advertising money is just not there. Most IT management are not tech-savvy and pay more attention to colorful ads than what the gurus are saying-- which makes it even harder to get the product used. The products that do get used in businesses are typically only the 'standards' like Apache or Sendmail, which have gained industry-wide acceptance.
research funds (Score:2, Insightful)
Yaztromo Replies to Everyone at once :). (Score:2, Informative)
Hi Everyone:
I'll probably try to get around to replying to many of your posts directly (will, the really useful ones at least :) ), but I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their input thus far, and reply to some of the recurring ideas and themes.
The jSyncManager has, in fact, been around for quite a while. I started working on it back in 1997. It eventually became my thesis project [brocku.ca]. Shortly after graduating from Brock University, I joined up with IBM, working at their Toronto Software Lab.
FUD (Score:2)
With the Economist's recent news on how users expect more and more from IT, how is the Open Source community ever going to keep up? Who is going to pay for it?
Is grounded in this kind of faulty logic. You have heard it before as, "free software can never produce a working kernel" or "free soft
Patronage... (Score:2, Interesting)
The only other thing remaining is to find muses for all the developers. That could be a tough one!
Free Software is like the Sun (Score:2)
The fact that you just can't turn a pretty penny on the production of Free Software, like you can with proprietary software, does not make it an economist's nightmare.
The way some people seem to perceive the threat of Free Software reminds me very much of a passage in Robert Heilbroner's book "The Worldly Philosophers" on Frédéric Bastiat. In Chapter 7, "The Victorian World and the Economic Underworld", Hielbroner reproduces Bastiat's satire of a manufacturers petition to make an ordinance again
Your product is in the wrong market (Score:2)
There is no 'marketing' of the the type of OS project your describe. A Palm-Java synchronization either works or it doesn't. If it works people pick up your code and make use of it. If it doesn't work, well....
"Marketable" OS projects are ones like JBoss and MySQL that have an element of complexity that requires a skilled professional. Not to belittle the work you are doing, I'm sure it was no small task for you to develop, but as it stand now, the binaires and some Javadoc API and most Java hackers could
BSD style license (Score:2)
Non Profit (Score:2, Interesting)
User-funded software and ESCROW (Score:3, Insightful)
- The escrow balance provides a clear marker as to where the donations are, and can have a positive effect on contributions. Consider the Blender situation.
- Contributors can give what they think it's worth to them to have a project (or project milestone) completed, without doing a calculus as to how their donation fits into the overall picture of getting work done.
- Contributors are assured that they will receive their cash back from the escrow account if the project is not completed.
- Developers are relieved from the burden of managing contributions
- Talented developers in developing countries with a spotty track record wrt respect for contract law are not impeded by this reputaton.
- Developers see a concrete pile of cash in an escrow account just waiting for them if they complete the project. There's no ambiguity about getting paid or not.
Funding for Open Source projects is a very interesting subject, IMO. As Free/Open Source software continues its inexorable march into the mainstream, I think it will be crucial to find GRASS-ROOTS methods of funding so that development is not overly influenced by corporate interests and "IP" issues.Team up with, or create a, consultancy (Score:4, Interesting)
A viable Open Source project will almost *always* require consultancy at the firms who choose to use it. If there's a better marriage between the commercial sector and Open Source projects I couldn't think of it. The challenge is to make sure there are 'no strings' and that each side thinks the share is fair. It strikes me that the 'best' Open Source projects are alread doing this (think MySQL, apache, etc).
As a further example, the company I work for sets aside a percentage of its turnover for project funding, our most recent being joining the FSF corporate sponsor programme (try and encourage your own companies to do this - they need waaaaaaaaaaay more than they've picked up so far - companies who use Open Souce *should* fund it!).
Implementors in the 'trenches' at Open Souce 'early adopters' should make the ideal funding partners for coders who, let's face it, made all this possible in the first place...
Just my £0.02
Voluntary Micropayments (Score:2)
I think we should write an application that people can use to get an idea of what applications they use. A program that tracks what is most important to them. Then, payment information follows each application, and each month, a list is brought up to allow the user to select who he wants to send money to. A click or two, and the money is on the way to the developer.
The trick is
Sell documentation (Score:2, Interesting)
Quality Assurance (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know the answer to this question (Score:2)
You're welcome.
Tax breaks for companies (Score:2, Funny)
Corps have itches too (Score:2)
These are problems they would not wish on their fiercest competitors, so there is no desire to keep it proprietary. In general, when a company's primary business is not co
A project that died through lack of funding (Score:2)
Try not to find yourself in that hole.
Forget it. Making money on writing Open Source... (Score:2)
My company has released on Sourceforge a very nice piece of software for managing projects called Outreach Project Tool [sourceforge.net], which is used by hundreds of companies around the world. Not one of them has even sent a postcard we requested to acknowledge their use, let alone any money.
Today, we also released another great tool for documenting IT infrastructure called DMO [sourceforge.net], and we don't expect to earn a single Euro in revenue from it, despite spending
Returns on Investment (Score:5, Interesting)
The very nature of an investment means that you are buying an asset that has a positive financial return.
A software project magically becomes a good investment when it starts returning money. The idea of asking for investment before you have a financial plan is guaranteed loss. It is no different than asking for alms.
I hate it, but those stupid affiliate web sites that clutter cyberspace have investment value, even though they really don't add much value to the net, while good OSS projects don't have investment value. This happens even despite the fact that the OSS project is adding a great deal of value to the planet.
Unfortunately, the economic thing is too often hidden from the IT staff. Yet, the whole investment thingy has driven software and IT development since its inception. The IT jobs existed because we were all building a capital asset, not because we were making interesting things happen on a screen.
The last tech boom, where people no longer had to show a return on investment messed up our minds, and we have to get the financial end back intact to thrive. That means programs that actually produce financial transactions.
I am a troll because I believe the value of OSS is in its being open, and not in its being free.
I believe with all my heart that software should be creating a capital asset.
When programming, I ask myself both about what I am adding to the technology as well as the financial assets of my employer.
This does not necessarily mean that we need to work for the productization of all computer code, but I really wish the OSS community would spend a little more time thinking about getting cash piped through its pipes.
As such, I found the shareware ideal much more appealing than pure OSS. The shareware concept essentially lets people learn from software, but demands payment when the software is used in a business setting.
I always felt proud when I managed to convince a company to buy a shareware program, because I was contributing to the software economy.
The Oracle approach has been quite successful. Students and schools can get the software for free, but businesses must pay for it.
In some ways, my ideal would be that the code is open for review and tweaking, but there is a license to use the material.
One possible mechanism for funding technology would to include a licensing layer in the technology. Basically each object in a build would record its source. Imagine a database filled with the names of individuals that contributed objects to a code. The company could then pay a license through a mechanism that distributes cash to the object owners.
With such a mechanism, OSS developers would have a cash flow. They would then find that they could invest in more code to increase that cash flow.
It really seems to me that the goal of a community should be the enrichment of the people in the community. It's never bothered me when a company has to pay for a computer license as that money goes into the community.
Re:Returns on Investment (Score:2)
However, I think that most successful open-source projects have
Re:Returns on Investment (Score:2)
The challenge is to put limits on the proprietary applications to assure robust environments. OSS projects that require a great deal of work and support might have multitiered licensing component, and the community should demand that if you use this component in a business setting, then you must buy the license.
If I am selling a product to a law firm or realty agents, I am more than happy transfer some of their w
TransGaming? MandrakeSoft? (Score:2)
Why cant we set up something like Transgaming, or the EFF, where people pay $5 a month or something, and then we vote to set up bounties to fund development. Whoever develops it wins the money.
Re:I'll donate some mod points... (Score:2)
It's not "have compiler, will travel", it's:
1. Get GCC
2. ???????
3. PROFIT!!!!
Duh. (If "Funny" doesn't count towards karma, neither should "offtopic" or "troll".)
Re:I'll donate some mod points... (Score:2)
http://www.mytsoftware.com/dailyprojects/
Re:Paying for porting (Score:2, Insightful)
An interesting idea -- but it's a bit hard to use for a Java-based project (like the jSyncManager), which doesn't require porting to different hardware or OS platforms :).
Yaz.
Re:How does Open Source survive? (Score:2)
I'm not a programer nor a lawyer so forgive me if I make a stupid/incorrect statemnet. Does this not depend on what license you use to begin with? If you GPL ar
Re:How does Open Source survive? (Score:2)
I'm not a programer nor a lawyer so forgive me if I make a stupid/incorrect statemnet. Does this not depend on what license you use to begin with? If you GPL are you not required to provide the source to anyone you distributed it to? And aren't you required to GPL any changes that you distribute publicly(even if you only distribute in exchange for cash.)
Under the GPL (and pretty much every other official Open Source license) you are required to distribute the source for your program to anyone you've distr