How big of a donation?

[JaseP]

I think the best way to accomplish that would be a kind of pledge/bid system, where a sponsor puts up a pledge of a certain amount of cash for a particular thing, and then devs can bid on whether they want to follow it up or not, almost like a mini-modified Kickstarter. But I reiterate that there should probably  be some percentage that goes into a pool for general LinuxMCE upkeep and development (website maintenance, projects the community or a board can vote on, etc.).

Under a system like the above, devs would be free to refuse/reject/ignore requests, payment not need be made until an agreement is reached between parties, but if "the house" sponsors the payment system, they could "skim" the house "tax," as well as set up an arbitration system for handling disputes (e.g.: "I did the work," vs. "Yeah, but it's not what I agreed to pay for," type disputes).

Bylaws could govern how the community helps arbitrate disputes. Both parties would have to agree to the alternate dispute process, and completion funds could be essentially held in escrow, awaiting either accepted feature completion, or the community settling disagreements about it.

[davegravy]

But this is not new.
If I am not mistaken there where special projects where you could pay TSCHAK and he will do it.
But I agree with possy that for the majority this project is a hobby, the fun factor should still be there.
 
We would have to find a modus where we can do both.

There's a consensus that there's a lack of developers on this project, right?. While it's ideal to have developers join the team out of their own interests and for fun, isn't the next best thing to hire them with donated money?

I liken this to my ongoing home reno. For fun, I wanted to do the whole thing myself, and I am capable, but it would just take too long... so I hired a contractor to install flooring and for a few other tasks.

If we manage to make even bigger strides with some hired help, wouldn't that feed back into more (for-fun) developer interest?

[Marie.O]

The problem is: You need to spend lots of hours to understand LinuxMCE architecture. You need to spend time doing the actual task. And devs aren't cheap, you are looking at a couple of thousand EUR for even simple tasks. I doubt that people are willing to spend that much money.

When it comes to donating, as we have seen in the past, most people think in terms of low two digit values. Well, you have to have a lot of donors to even get to 4 digits, let alone to mid to high four digits, when hiring "external" people.

The idea about donation is a cool thing. From my experience in the past, it just doesn't really work for a non-business system like LinuxMCE.

[JaseP]

I look at it more as a kind of "tips" and steering kind of thing,... Kind of like giving someone some cash to pick up on project first, before turning to others they may have been planning on doing... I was not even thinking about "outside" help.

However, I was thinking about it in terms of donations in the three digit range,... spare time stuff,... like, "cool I could use that extra cash to get a new MD or new peripherals," type of thing... not full time employment stuff...

[tschak909]

To put it into perspective, the GYR3101 work took approximately 16 people to donate towards. It took me 2 days of constant work to get it working... It was $2000 for that feature, and it paid my rent that month (as I was completely broke for almost 4 months at that time).

-Thom

[JaseP]

Well,... you could always have classes of donations,... Like; "tip jar," "thank yous," and "OK, so I gots me a blank check here, what'll it take,"...

[l3mce]

Ok then. Lets try.

Who wants something, how much money are they willing to contribute, how much support can they get?

Make a thread, and a commitment. If enough people glom on, and somebody who knows what they are doing thinks it is acceptable they will say I can do it.
Once terms are set, you can paypal the money to posde, with the understanding that this money is gone.

If the terms are not met, then posde keeps the money for the thankless job of maintaining this project, paying for the bandwidth and storage, handling the package management and the rest of the endless list of things he does so we can debate about how to improve it.

If terms are met within the timeframe, then posde keeps 10% for being the trustee and all of the afore mentioned.

So:
What you want
When you feel it should be due
What you are willing to pay
Your pitch, to get others to contribute, 5 20 100 whatever... it can add up.

[tkmedia]

Some how in general I think donations get overlooked in this community.

With over 10k spent on testing hardware over the last several years.  lmcecompatible.com has not received one donation, that I recall. ( With the possible exception of platypus whose Tank Stick I still owe him)

And how many actually hit the donate button on the home page.

However I do thank those who have made purchases.

As far as  Dianemo they are available in North America and they probably could add support for what you need.
You do realize for commercial use you would need a licensed product like Dianemo.
lmcecompatible can also offer Dianemo licensed systems.

Happy donating

Tim

[KlfJoat]

Of the methods I know for funding open source projects, only the following three would seem to work for LinuxMCE:

1. Donate
2. Bounty
3. Sponsor

For Donation, that's the "tip jar" method.  What you're saying is "I like what you've done, here's some money".  This is usually seen as "general" monies for the project, and tend to go toward non-personnel operating costs (hosting, test hardware, etc.).  There is no specific goal, other than the overall support of the project.  See: Donate button on LMCE.org.

Sponsorships are when a (typically commercial) outside entity gets involved.  They usually rely on the product and want to see it continued and improved.  There may or may not be a specific agenda for a commercial sponsorship, but it's generally assumed that their involvement will steer the project in ways beneficial to the commercial entity, while simultaneously enriching the project as a whole.  Hypothetically this would be represented by Dianemo paying a salary to l3mce for his work on LMCE.  But I don't see this happening here at the moment.

I think there is some real potential for a Bounty program in LMCE.  This can be as small as one individual and one developer agreeing to pay for implementation of a feature or piece of hardware, or as large as Kickstarter projects (which are a type of multi-donor bounty system).  One good example is that I have a Vista 20p alarm system, but unfortunately did not get a VistaICM.  I am no programmer, so I would find it invaluable to be able to pay someone to integrate either the new VistaICM replacement or the AD2USB device.  Given some of the other posts in the forums, others may find such a driver useful as well, and if everyone contributes then everyone wins.

There are other funding methods, but they all have governance overhead that I think is out of proportion with the size of LMCE at this time.  Take the "milestone" approach initially mentioned.   As mentioned, you'd need to set up governance structures to ensure accountability and payment.  And as the number of parties in each milestone transaction increase, you have more stakeholders, meaning more chance for disagreement and drama. 

I like the idea for testing interest in forum posts (maybe a special sub-forum for this?), and if there is a lot, maybe creating a Kickstarter project.  If only one bounty offer shows up, but is enough of an "angel investment" (able to realistically fund the entire feature themselves), then that could be a PayPal transaction between them and the dev.  Maybe a half up front/half on completion payment arrangement on small transacts like that.