Comments on: Pan Handling in Open Source?

By: Dominique De Vito

Dominique De Vito — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:59:54 +0000

While donation could bring resources, as far as I read, some open source projet owners have expressed their serious doubts about donation process, because it does not attract a lot of attention. 'Donate' buttons on open source projects' web site have very little success. May be it's due to the success of open source: these days, a lot of open source projects are used in every Java development... Few developers pay attention to the life of open source projects as most of developers think they are part of the landscape: nothing less, but nothing more too.

I thought about it and my idea was and still is that donation could be higher if it gives some kind of vote rights on manpower (well, it's all about benefits participation gives).
Then, it's not about donation anymore, but much more about what I have called FDD, that is, Funding-Driven Development.

I have written in March 2 posts about it:
Revisiting donation/funding for open source projects - let's talk about FDD
and as an example,
Another idea for Funding-Driven Development (FDD) - for Firefox and OpenOffice.

Well, it's a matter of experiment. Maybe one day, one is going to follow ideas I have expressed in my posts, or will have ideas close to mine. And we will see if this FDD approach is better or not. And if better, it may spread quickly.

May be this FDD approach could start, in parallel with donation, while creating a new membership status, quite similar to FoE, giving vote rights on manpower, according to the money raised.

My 2 cents.

By: Dominique De Vito

Dominique De Vito — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:59:54 +0000

By: Robert Konigsberg

Robert Konigsberg — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:33:48 +0000

I think that sample page is great. I'd go a little farther and add slightly more sparkle or positivity toward the higher values. Even add a special watermark for a $35 entry.

By: Denis

Denis — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:32:54 +0000

“It seems to work for Wikipedia as they tend to have a fund raising drive model. Their users don’t seem to mind either.”

I think some disagree with you
https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1029

By: Corey

Corey — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:23:45 +0000

Wow, nice timing, the OSU Open Source Lab just launched a new fundraising campaign: http://osuosl.org/give6

which raises a whole new level of questions with regard to OSS, funding, and donations. There are a whole slew of projects that benefit from the hosting that OSL provides (for a list see http://osuosl.org/services/hosting/communities ) and many of these projects have their own funding needs and fundraising campaigns, yet none of them have the means to cover the costs that need to be incurred for hosting and expanding the OSL. How do you juggle those needs appropriately?

Luckily they get a lot of love from Google, but that model is not sustainable.

By: Ronald S Woan

Ronald S Woan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:57:44 +0000

I should also say I am a huge fan of t-shirts as another fundraiser and way to promote the brand.

By: Ronald S Woan

Ronald S Woan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:57:01 +0000

I don't know where the line is. I don't mind having something in the software itself, i.e. I use some stuff like terminals which use a web page as the splash screen which has a donate button in the upper right. I think I have donated to at least three projects this year, probably multiple times in some cases.

I personally don't mind using the golden upper left triangle of a web page, but I tend to see these in the less jarring upper right.

By: Eric Cloninger

Eric Cloninger — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:24:16 +0000

I'm a FoE as well as a yearly contributor to Wikipedia. I get a great deal of benefit and enjoyment from both. I see it as a personal commitment on top of what my company contributes as part of our sponsorship of the foundation.

I say bring it front and center–it reminds us of the benefits we receive and it will annoy those who only take and never give.

By: Kim Moir

Kim Moir — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:57:23 +0000

If there is a line, we haven't crossed it yet. I recently added a link to friends of Eclipse to our download pages. Looking at the main eclipse.org web page, it's hard to find the donate button, all all. +1 for making the donate button more visible.