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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?"
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.
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?
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.
Don't forget the security issues. Once you get involved with tickets sales into any place that deals with scalpers, you start dealing with organized crime and they will own your server unless your always on top of all the php hacks and not all of them get published quickly.
The main difference between a script kiddy playing with a ticking server and the mob doing it is that the scrip kiddy will get a free ticket (so the money doesn't add but) but the mob will end up repricing the tickets they want to scalp.
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.
What incentive is there to sponsor this kind of product?
Getting your desired features added exactly as you want them, and not having to pay for all the functionality that's already finished (as you would if you were hiring it done ground-up) or feaures funded by someone else.
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.