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Finding Sponsors for an Open Source Project?
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?"
[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...
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.
begging for dollars on Slashdot... in other words, Congratulations! Your funds will be arriving shortly, I'm sure.
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?
As in beer, not necessarily. As in speech, yes, it is free.
If you know of a group of people who are interested in a feature, try using http://www.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.
Not really....The GPL allows you to charge for free software. That is a common misconception people have. There is no reason for programmers to starve just because they write software that is free as in free speech. No one ever said anything about free beer!
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.
I mean, Ticketmaster's obviously got loads of spare cash, have you asked them for some money?
Not having to pay for other peoples work. Seriously, our business makes extensive use of OSS, but we don't pay a dime for it. We would have never gotten off the ground without it. Oh, and unless we make it big, here's my way of acknowledging the community that helped us so much: "THANKS GUYS! YOU'RE ALL SWELL!" Peace out.
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.
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?
Interesting. For some reason I just can't see an industry dominated by the MPAA to get behind open source...
In Soviet Russia sponsors find YOU!
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. ;-)
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
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."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
PHP isn't a very good langauge to write large scale applications in specifically for what you are writing. Maybe if it were written in Python, or perhaps C++. I don't hold PHP applications in high reguard because people program in the langauge without thinking.(99.9% of projects) GPLed applications are nice, because they are Free( *grin* ), but using a language which is slow and ill used means bad projects. Also, the PHP team is very foolish. I'm suprised they included the crap for code nuSOAP as a library. They obviously haven't programed with nuSOAP and don't know what they are doing. I used to program in PHP for a while, and really disliked it after using Python and Zope. Then I used Ruby to add to my learned langauges. C++ is great on the client side as well. Overall, php was hard to turn back to because of the design of php. Now I earn money by converting php apps to Python. Great for a brain strain. :/
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!
This was clearly developed to satisfy someone's need, so the project already has the commercial interest.
It looks like the relevant party has acquired a pretty good solution so far, but wants it developed further. So, might I suggest that they actually put some money in the kitty? It's already saved them cash after all, through not needing to buy a proprietary package.
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?
I don't respond to AC's.
"(...) 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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...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..
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Although your description was excellent, I feel that it could be beefed up a bit by using the word "synergy" a few times. I've found that companies tend to get an additional 10% venture capital for each time the word "synergy" is used in their mission statement/press release.
I don't respond to AC's.
you've the core of a generic pay to pass pay to play system. plus you've got stuff happening in the future that you can be incorporating now...
The national ID card in the form of drivers license is coming soon. It will, in all likelyhood carry biometric tags giving you lots of options in areas where there is fraud. Creditcard gas purchases for example. It's usually the first thing a thief does with a stolen credit card. The future pump will be able to look at the card and the purchaser and if not in the CC companies database, require a scan of the drivers license bio data to make surethe names and faces all match.
Plenty of other applications.
Funding?
Snort a lot of coke. it will make your presentation infectiously animated.
Go to parties attended by surgeons, lawyers, medicare scammers, phishers, and apammers for your first round funding. This is better than VC as they won't expect as much in return.
Need more off the wall advice? Write.
...turn the program proprietary, get some loan from a bank, and then sell the program and forget about Open Source!!
Now seriously, you should ask yourself why would anyone want to sponsor you? Any sponsor has to benefit some way or another. So maybe you should find some Cinema Guild which oversees the theatres and try to convince them with a unified ticket system or something.
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' funding of key F/L/OSS projects?
... your problem.
:(
I'm still working on my software which will be used by people who sell pictures of Elvis on black velvet on Ebay. I was hoping that I'd be able to complete it with funding by interested users, but your story has me depressed
I didn't see anything in the summery relating to pornography....
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.
Besides getting it posted on Slashdot, you can apply for grants from IBM's research division, and believe it or not MSR (Microsoft Research), 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 my Gentoo Linux boxen though
We're all looking for that FOSS business model that they keep telling us about.
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 don't respond to AC's.
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 respond to AC's.
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?
Philosophy.
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 like muppets.
Yep move to Sourceforge first then slashdot for money.
I think he got his setup wrong.
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 entities that don't, but since I suppose that deploying the solution is a huge amount of work, support and ability to steer the feature-comitee alone may be enough an incentive.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
By open-sourcing it, you've opened the floodgates. On of the big companies is going to take your code, add a bunch of features,
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 versions derived from your original base. (This will never happen with Linux because there are too many contributors to make it practical).
But if you (or all the copyright holders on a piece of GPLed code) want to release your original code under a GPL license, you can.
More importantly (this is the point), in such cases, you can add new code, and release that with a *non-GPL* license only.
If you have the original copyright, you can do this. So, if the software is at an early developmental stage, it's not necessarily that big a deal that it's been GPLed. Provided, that is, you have a close-knit group of developers who *all* agree to non-GPL distribution/modification of their code.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
Do what they did back in the good ol' days of the dot com bubble
Great idea. All we need now is a machine to take us back to the days when people actually gave out money like that.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
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 work involved. Any contributor can have his/her own reasons on why to do it for that money (prestige, fun, interesting, 'will code for food', whatever).
For each item, users of the software can donate or commit to paying -some- amount for implementation of a feature. Likewise, users can apply their own reasons for raising or lowering their rewards. When donations+commitments reach a currently standing offer, collect the money and have the feature implemented.
Think it was a BeOS- or Amiga-related project where I saw this done before, maybe other projects have used this to get things done.
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 articles and suspiciously placed articles.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Since you aren't going to get people to pay for your web application when they can DL it for free from SourceForge and extend (fork) it themselves, it's better to turn your project into a live service and then charge subscriptions to clients who need to use the program/service.
Funding an open source project is a HIGH RISK investment, so unless you are looking for someone who wants to make a donation to a non-profit organization (which would require you to provide them w/ the proper receipts & legal red tape bs), chances are you're just day dreaming.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Now bend over and prepare to be ass-raped by the likes of IBM and Apple who will make millions off your work without ever giving you a cent.
After your done with that, read this and laugh. It will make you feel better. What an idiot.
We've started a sponsorship program for the osCommerce project where our community members can make a financial contribution to the project and get back some additional benefits in return.
;-)
This increases ones awareness in our community otherwise only possible through making contributions available (development work) or being an active supporter in the community forums.
The finances gained from this are then put towards the fees involved in hosting such a project, organizing team meetings, and are also spread throughout the team when it is possible to do so. The important thing we keep in mind is to not provide a must-have feature for community sponsors, but to make it easier for them to do things also normal community members can achieve, and to always give back to the community when asking for something.
For the corporate side (partners), placing advertising banners throughout your site would also help, but obviously only when the advertising content is of use to your community!
Sometimes partners come to you, and sometimes you must go to them
I use Sage for Firefox to read newsfeeds, and I just noticed I now see ads in the Slashdot feed.
The image is through feedstermedia.com
My feed location is http://slashdot.org/index.rss
The Ad
Expand the product so it completely encompasses the small-venue theater's business needs. Market the product as a turnkey entry-level digital theater in a box. Partner with a big name digital projector company that wants their new models involved. Then empower the entire world population with the availability of a new, affordable, digital theater business model that fills the entertainment niche for millions of people. Sell the lawyer-approved business plan on the side.
Maybe you'd get rich and your 15 minutes someday. Wished I'd had a suggestion for funding sources - maybe next time...
Probably not for people who don't know basic English.
In the U.S., TicketBastard may have patents on key parts of what you describe.
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 a specific product that many won't be using when many other products with wider applicability are already desperate for what scarce resources there are.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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 relationship with them, and authentically give them value that exceeds the amount of money they might give you. This can include support, it can also include feature requests - especially if there is something good you can make your software do that no competitor does. This might require advertising to them or approaching a lot of them.
This is a high barrier to entry market you're trying to enter. If you can't find anyone in that industry who wants to put any money towards it, either fund it yourself or stop and do something somebody wants. I suspect you can find someone if you try hard enough, but I'm not sure how long that might take.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I don't know if this would help, but have you looked at the possibility of getting a small business grant/loan from the government. You could try setting up as a separate software company and getting startup grants to develop the software.
<gir voice> I love this sig... </gir voice>
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. The reason we selected JBoss instead on one of the many closed source competitors was quality, not price. The price of even the most expensive J2EE servers is peanuts compared to the price of our application.
But a company like where I work (where mission critical applications are deployed on top of Open Source software) needs the best possible technical service and support for the Open Source software it runs on top of. One day of downtime is estimated to cost up to about US$3 million for the average installation of our software.
For JBoss a group of core developers saw the need for technical service and support for companies like mine. They formed a company to give service, support and application development advice.
Of course the company I work for is a customer of JBoss Inc., and we are very happy with their services. In one case we reported a problem with JBoss server clusters. After some communication we got down to the root cause of the problem, and within a few hours they had a patch ready that solved a race that could lead to a distributed deadlock condition.
I don't think that JBoss Inc. directly contributes money to the JBoss project. But they contribute a lot of resources. They have most of the core JBoss developers on their payroll, and these developers are also working on the JBoss project. They host the bug database of JBoss, and recently they also starting hosting the CVS repository.
Disclaimer: I may be biased since I contributed code to JBoss years ago, but I have never been affiliated with JBoss Inc. (except that I work for a company that is a customer of them).
Part of your software collects payments online. It would be unfortunate if there were a "bug" in that software that somehow charged a little extra and dropped it into a separate account. I seem to remember something like that in one of the Superman movies....
And if you do screw up some mundane detail and get caught, then what's the worst that could happen? Probably spend a couple of months in a white-collar resort prison with conjugal visits.
If you're not simply trolling, step away from the bottle, crack pipe or whatever it is that has impaired your brain function. They HAVE an application written in PHP. They need to rewrite it in another language about as much as you need to consume more intoxicants. You don't hold PHP in high regard because you're incapable of holding anything at the moment, at least not without some help from a sober friend. Do yourself a favor and hide your car keys, shut down your computer and go to bed. But have a friend put some aspirin on your nightstand first. You're going to need them.
Write a business plan
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
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.
I get it! People who can't afford to spend money will want to give money away!
It makes perfect sense now!
On a serious note, if a lack of funding is cutting your development speeds, perhaps you could consider 'employing' more developers willing to work for a mildly successful project for free?
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
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, 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.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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, 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). 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.
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!
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Do you have a nice logo? It might make you look more professional and worthy of funding.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
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).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What many people are missing out on is that this type of software is not restricted to use by movie theatres. Any organisation that needs to book events of any type can use this kind of package. As an example, look at Theatre Manager (www.artsman.com). It has all the bells and whistles, and costs an arm and a leg too. Something like the authour is working on would help out the small community arts groups immesurably, not to mention non-profit event organisers. Frankly, I doubt that the movie theatres will be interested anyways, since they are almost ALL owned by the studios, and the incentive to change software is nonexistant. Perhaps the occasional mom-and-pop theatre in Smalltown USA would be interested, but those are few and far between, and would really have no need for computerised bookings of any sort. My suggestion (having worked in the live theatre industry) is to give away the software, but charge for support. That's the Open Source Way!
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
Over the last several years, RedHat has established a viable model in Open Source Software. The intial hype and comparison to MS, billion dollars of capitalization, fortunately did not deter them from focussing on their goals. What this indicates is to infuse funds, and a plan that provides for building a base of customers and a community. Today funding in the OSS arena seems to be attracting attention, the last notable one being spikesource
They've tried selling support and customization. They want a "sponsor" to just give them money.
They want a "sponsor" to just give them money.
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.
"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)."
"Information wants to be free". Hmmm...now were have I heard that before? Oh yes, everytime some recirocal agreement comes up, and it involves money. So if some can't be bothered to honor that reciprocal agreement. Why should we have the expectation that a weaker reciprocal agreement be honored?*
The former has the enforcement of law. The latter has pure whim.
At the risk of losing my good karma, and come off as a troll, my first tip to you is to change the name of the app...
It's one thing to have an application on sourceforge named phpmygreatapp because you NEED that name there in order to attract potential coders as well as getting some people to beta test your software... phpmygreatapp let's people on sourceforge guess quite a bit about your application and wether they can contribute or use a client-server-web-php-based app
If you want to get funding however, call your app something else! Remember that your application's name is like the proverbial book-cover and people will judge your app on the basis of name alone (like I am doing now) until they get a chance to poke and prod it...
The best example of this is Firefox, can you imagine a successful app named CPlusPlusMyBrowser?...
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
LinuxFund.org raises money via credit card sign ups and donates it to OSS projects like yours. Unforunately their site is down right now.
There are numerous jobs that are currently unfilled, just a perusal of the daily classifieds shows that McDonalds, Wendy's, Burger King, etc are in great need of people to staff their establishments.
The work is not hard, plus your familiarity with their products coupled with your obvious ability to analyze and construct things would enable you to quicly pick up the job.
You're obviously a geek, which means your clothes are not the cat's meow regarding fashion, and you hygine is probably not the best. Luckily you won't be bothered by the dorky uniforms these places require you to wear, since your own clothes are equally as tacky. Being around food odors will probably help mask your own odor from not bathing regularly.
Typical pay is about $6 an hour. After taxes, you should probably have about $900 left. This is PLENTY sufficient to rent an apartment and cover the utilities. Since all you will need the apartment for is sleeping, your only socts will probably be buying a mattress.
After doing your fry chef shift, you will have plenty of time left in the day to go to that little coding thing.
See, that wasn't TOO hard!
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.
:) Also, i'm not sure if this service handles big amounts, and i'm not sure how much you would like to ask for this. Keep in mind though that the easier you make the entire process, the more people will likely donate. This goes for all methods i think. Nobody likes to click through 10 pages, fill out your personal details, enter creditcard info, WAITING, etc.
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 costs me a couple of euro is too easy not to do. It takes very little time and it's *fast*.
I have no idea where you could get such a service though, but i'm sure somebody here knows. And there's always google ofcourse
Good luck!
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 have.
Provide that, and you've got your projects sponsor.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How about you reserve the right to sell advertising space on the tickets themselves. User gets the software for free, you get the advertising revenue? You may have to allow the user some kind of veto, but you could offer the user a choice of two or three advertisers, one of which they're probably happy to allow onto their tickets. Or even allow the user to advertise themselves on their own tickets!
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 OSS license incompatible with the GPL.
As for your own software, which appears to have been developed from scratch, I don't really expect people to open source major independent works. The way OSS "should" work (and this is a personal not legal opinion) is that you develop something a lot faster because you use open source code and libraries, giving you a working system fast. That way all improvements gradually build up OSS software. That makes it commercially wise because the time saved exceeds the advantages of doing it yourself from scratch. If OSS didn't do anything to help you, well then it would be charity to donate it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This might sound a bit stupid to you guys. But have you ever considered funding the project by selling the software? You know, customers paying for it? It *is* a very popular method of funding a company you know...
Take a look at this: http://www.affs.org.uk/grants
Did you take a look at this this page?
It provides a pretty good write up on the types of funding available for open source projects, but the information can also be used in general for any type of project that needs financing.
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 for a little value added. Every theater has a core group that are seasons ticket holders. A mailing list to let them know what is coming, events, maybe interviews with the visiting talent. Let's say you charge $500 a year for the service that is less than $50 a month figure $20 a month for the hosting service if you can get 500 theaters you get a good chunk of change every year. For one or maybe two developers.
You could eventually expand this to an entire theater management system. Combine your system with SQL-Ledger and open office to provide an entire turn key solution. You could provide the workstations, computers, bar code scanners, printers, a server, a WAP, and a back up solution.
You could offer a link to your server somewhere through ssh as a back up service. Don't forget that with ssh you could also offer remote admin as well.
I found out a long time ago that it takes a lot more than just a good program to make money.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
No, thanks. I rather fuck my gf.
" 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 scanner. Set it up with a secure wap, ups and wireless cards and preconfigure it all. The take it out of the box and plug the WAP into a DSL line and plug the computers into the UPSs
Then include a yearly agreement. Maybe host the online version for them. And finaly provide GOOD tech support.
You can then add customizaton and other services. Maybe throw in an Accounting System Open Office, or a DTP with program templates.
So if they want they can download the source and put all the pieces together but most will not want too.
Oh and you will not make money for a while.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.