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#25 2007-06-04 16:48:46
- Neko
- Member
- Registered: 2004-03-18
- Posts: 458
Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
pfctdayelise wrote:
IMO open source projects don’t ask for donations often or specifically enough. How can it be said “donations aren’t enough” if you’ve never set a target, explained where the funds will exactly go (a budget?), had a banner on all the official sites, had three-times-annually official fundraisers/donation drives where you asked the users to please convert their goodwill into a moderate amount of cash, for X specific goals? Is there a feeling that this would be too agressive or look too desparate? I would prefer the project to look desparate if that is the true financial state that they’re in, and to have that expression before resorting to other means like ads, pro feature sets, whatever.
I suggested introducing a Donate tab that went away upon annual payment, but it kinda went down like a lead balloon…?
Those are some nice ideas indeed (that’s the Wikipedia’s way, I think, and it work well for them).
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
Neko wrote:
p. Those are some nice ideas indeed (that’s the Wikipedia’s way, I think, and it work well for them).
Heh, I spend a lot of time at Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) sites. is it so obvious? ;)
Some of WMF funds go towards funding MediaWiki development. But I suppose that people are donating because they like the content, not the package it comes in.
Also the WMF is a registered charity, which possibly makes it easier to drum up donations rather than a random Paypal button. But I don’t know. Because of that they’re forced to have budgets and so on.
It’s also worth noting that the WMF is not hugely comfortably funded – the last fundraiser made about $1m of the specified $1.5m aim, so the basics can carry on, but not all of the other stuff could be funded. There are frequent discussions in the community about ads, partnerships, other ways to raise money.
But FWIW I don’t think they hold fundraiser often enough, either. :)
Last edited by pfctdayelise (2007-06-04 17:51:55)
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
pfctdayelise
… Also the WMF is a registered charity…
Not that it matters very much for international communities like txp. Not every country allows tax returns for donations in charities registered outside their own borders.
Last edited by colak (2007-06-04 18:52:50)
Yiannis
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
What hasn’t? Team Textpattern selling its services?
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
42.
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
Sorry, something strange happened and Mary was the last post when I replied…
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
Jeremie wrote:
What hasn’t? Team Textpattern selling its services?
I’m talking about registered charities, funding and tax returns not about txp here:).
basically my point is that people who donate for projects in the net or elsewhere are not necessarily doing it for tax benefits. For example, I am not allowed any tax benefits by donating to wikibitia.
Most registered charities on the net are registered as such in their own countries. If you are in Europe and donate money to a US registered charity you do it because you want to, not because you will claim it on your tax….
So where does all these lead? My suggestion above
I would be very happy to pay to be a member of this forum if it meant that the money went to the development of txp.
>edit… just read your post Jeremie… Not sure what happened either but I take it that the comment from you was referring to this post of mine…
Last edited by colak (2007-06-04 19:06:57)
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
BTW: We are now rendering a selection of commercial offers, most visibly in the FAQ section of Textpattern’s main web site. These offers are selected by Google’s own approach of associating website contents with suitable suppliers of commercial goods, so you might benefit from these as well, or at least giggle upon Google’s sense of humor.
Google’s TOS wouldn’t allow us to encourage clicks, so we don’t.
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Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
Mary wrote:
The team, and yes. We got a handful of enquiries from the only-curious (which we expected), from those with understandably low budgets (but as often happens in web dev, sometimes still unrelatively high expectations), and a small number of those from the target market. Since we started (a year ago) I’ve personally worked on a grand total of 3 small projects, and I don’t foresee the prospects changing any time soon. We’re presently working on something different.
That’s quite depressing! I am one of the people who contacted Team Textpattern last year for a custom solution, but for various reasons which Mary alludes to (and some other reasons), it did not work out.
Which is not to say it won’t – in fact it will – just not now.
Can we work on something new – a list of plugins/extensions that the community is interested in – and then have minimum payments towards contributing towards development of said plugins? Or perhaps the Pro Series that Alex started?
I for one would very much welcome giving Team TXP and the developers some money. Those of us who can’t afford to spend a lot could contribute to a larger pool.
One problem I see is that if we don’t create a list of extensions we want added, its not going to be possible to get the funding.
Possible solutions to this….?
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#34 2007-06-08 01:20:08
- Logoleptic
- Plugin Author
- From: Kansas, USA
- Registered: 2004-02-29
- Posts: 482
Re: Do *all* open source CMSs suffer from financial starvation?
Personally, I think the establishment of a “Textpattern Foundation” as a non-profit organization might be a great idea. People would probably feel better sending their money to a verifiable non-profit enterprise than just sending it “somewhere.” Citizens in the country where the organization was legally established would also get the benefit of a tax write-off1. I used to work in non-profit fundraising, and you’d be surprised what a motivation the tax thing is for some people, especially major donors.
As a non-profit organization, Textpattern could brazenly ask for money directly on its website without seeming “cheap” about it or arousing suspicion. Something to think about.
1 So pick a rich country, or the one with the highest growth potential for Txp usership.
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