[feedback] Developers pay

colak · 2007-04-28 10:21:09

In fact textdrive’s home page still boasts TextDrive proudly supports open source software. TextDrive believes open source software is important for the growth of the internet as a medium of communication, and proudly supports many projects and communities through the provision of servers, infrastructure, development tools and funding. ~~There is no money mentioned there any more~~

EDIT… OK I’m blind:)

Last edited by colak (2007-04-28 15:11:09)

FireFusion · 2007-04-28 13:11:18

It wasn’t that long ago that system was still up. I think when I crossgraded my VC3 account it was still there. PunBB.org still says 15% goes to development of PunBB.

Last edited by FireFusion (2007-04-29 20:13:12)

rui · 2007-04-28 15:51:43

jstubbs wrote:

That’s why I signed up to TXD in the first place – to help fund TXP and its developers. We were given a choice of which developer/application we wished to support, and I chose TXP. As I recall, it did state 10% of either the total amount of the hosting, or 10% of the profits.

Many people like me would have signed up to TXD hosting in order to support TXP, and now we see that the developers got nothing out of it.

Exactly my case! And, I’m not happy that the developers did not got nothing…
In my opinion, this situation deserves (at least) a comment by Mr. Dean Allen.

hcgtv · 2007-04-28 16:58:49

rui wrote:

In my opinion, this situation deserves (at least) a comment by Mr. Dean Allen.

At least a clarification from up top would be nice.

Who gets the donations from the textpattern.com front page?

jstubbs · 2007-04-28 17:19:13

Perhaps its time for TXP to take the next step and have paid-for plugins, a list of approved TXP developers (or just Team TXP) and/or Alex’s paid membership scheme. Anything whereby we can directly assist the developers and community.

Contributions don’t work. I have contributed to several developers here, but to be honest, I don’t even remember who exactly! I am more comfortable with directly supporting TXD developers or those who provide paid-for services.

Hear from Dean? He went AWOL – he took a leave of absence from Joyent too. Seems to me Alex is the new leader.

Alex, would you mind clarifying who is in the dev team now? Has Pedro left?

TheEric · 2007-04-28 20:38:36

This reminds me of the B2 -> WordPress huga-a-boo from way back when. Michael disappeared, updates slowed. B2 became driven by a core set of people under no real direction…

Is Dean the new Michael? (I think that was the name of the original B2 developer)

soulship · 2007-04-28 20:48:44

Wow! I have two VC accounts in my name and sent several other people that way as well asking them to check TXP as the beneficiary of their percentage. I am aghast that this project never saw a dime off of that. For my part I have close to 1200 dollars into TXD of which 120.00 should have gone to TXP development. That is not to mention at least 6 other accounts that I sent there with the same intent ($2400+ = at least onother $240.00). What a travesty! The subsequent “lifetime” offers should have generated thousands of dollars for this project!

Neko · 2007-04-28 22:08:50

soulship wrote:

What a travesty!

Looks like that. I’d certainly like to hear TXD’s reasons/explanations, tho.

Last edited by Neko (2007-04-28 22:10:23)

zem · 2007-04-28 22:45:24

Developers with checkin access to the Textpattern svn repository: dean, sencer, pedro, mary, myself, and now ruud and (shortly) wet. You can see who’s active here.

Pedro recently asked us to count him as “emeritus developer” because his new work with Joyent will leave time for occasional contributions only. Sencer has been busy working on other things but hopes to have some time for Textpattern soon. Dean’s last checkin was in September 2005.

The business entity representing Team Textpattern for consulting work and commercial development is Threshold State Pty Ltd, an Australian company.

The textpattern.com domain is owned by Dean. Until about a week ago the Paypal donations from there went to him, as did affiliate hosting revenue; I have no idea how much any of that amounts to. Donations and affiliate commisions from team.textpattern.com go to team members; revenue from there is minimal but much appreciated.

Any arrangements regarding VC funding were made between Textdrive and Dean. The rest of the team had no involvement to my knowledge. Textdrive made no promises or agreements with us.

I can’t answer for Textdrive; I don’t work for them, and I don’t know what arrangements they made with their customers. Any questions should be directed to them.

Last edited by zem (2007-04-28 22:48:05)

hcgtv · 2007-04-28 22:53:19

zem wrote:

Developers with checkin access to the Textpattern svn repository: dean, sencer, pedro, mary, myself, and now ruud and (shortly) wet.

Congrats ruud and wet!

Textdrive made no promises or agreements with us.

Textdrive did make promises to other Open Source projects that from what is coming to light have not been fulfilled.

http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=12452
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=15553
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=1465

Time to Digg a little further?

Last edited by hcgtv (2007-04-28 23:02:21)

zem · 2007-04-28 23:03:24

Contributions don’t work. I have contributed to several developers here, but to be honest, I don’t even remember who exactly! I am more comfortable with directly supporting TXD developers or those who provide paid-for services.

I agree. We’ve tried donations in the past, and the amount it brings in is basically pocket money (I mean no offence to those who donated). With basically no marketing, a week’s worth of revenue from the Redirect Pro plugin easily exceeded a year’s worth of donations to Team Textpattern. (It’s still not much, but enough to suggest the idea has merit).

Numbers aside, I’m a professional, not a busker. We’ve been working for a long time on ways to earn an honest living building Textpattern. It’s difficult and frustrating. There is no shortage of ideas, just time and knowledge and experience and resources.

The “Textpattern Membership” proposal was one of those ideas. The reaction has not been encouraging. We’re considering others.

guiguibonbon · 2007-04-28 23:46:53

What!? The donations button isn’t going to devs? That’s plain theft. I don’t get why you’re keeping it there.

On a sidenote, I’ve found the perfect solution for getting you guys paid. I’ve never felt like there was anything but plugin ransoms i’d pay for (there’s always a free alternative to anything anyway). But this might be just it. Make a firefox plugin based on the web developper toolbar that let’s you save stylesheets, pages and forms on the fly, with live preview. Think about it, I bet it wouldn’t even be too hard a thing to do. I’d be very much willing to pay 30$ a year for it (updates included of course). What’s more about it, it will make tons of buzz, and keeps txp the same for everyone.

Since I had the idea, will I get a life subscription for free? And to be a tester? :)

zem · 2007-04-28 23:48:58

Before reaching for your pitchfork and flaming torch, please remember that Textdrive provides a home for Textpattern. There are (at least) two sides to the story. If you’re a Textdrive customer and you have a question about their policies, you should ask them for a clarification.

Again, I don’t believe they made any promises to the Textpattern dev team.

Neko · 2007-04-29 00:31:45

zem wrote:

Until about a week ago the Paypal donations from there went to him, as did affiliate hosting revenue; I have no idea how much any of that amounts to. Donations and affiliate commisions from team.textpattern.com go to team members; revenue from there is minimal but much appreciated.

Well, that’s reasonable; Dean is the guy that started it all, the one that did (I guess) the biggest part in terms of coding and ideas, the guy that paid all the expenses by himself when it comes to servers and stuff, at least until TXD was born. We really all owe him a lot.

Even so, and just by reading our (users) responses in this thread, it’s surprising to notice that almost all of us were under the impression that the current dev team was somehow being paid or at least able to get some money for their efforts either via TXD OS support, or donations, etc… It seems that’s not true.

So, not in order to point fingers to anyone (if we really want to help, after all, the “donate” link is still there) it would be nice to receive an explanation regarding where the TXD Open Source support money actually went. It was our money, after all.

Regarding TXP future and dev support, from now on I’ll donate some money for every TXP-published site I make.

In addition I believe (I know my opinion doesn’t really count, but forums exist even for people like me! :))) that a model similar to EE would be fantastic if applied to TXP: a free core version for anyone and another version that costs money but offers premium features like multiple categories, real multi-languages capabilities, maybe a shopping cart and so on. I’d love to see something like that, and sure I’d be glad to pay more money for that kind of software.

Last edited by Neko (2007-04-29 00:56:37)

Mary · 2007-04-29 01:36:22

Who gets the donations from the textpattern.com front page?

Emphasis added:

Until about a week ago the Paypal donations from there went to him, as did affiliate hosting revenue; I have no idea how much any of that amounts to. Donations and affiliate commisions from team.textpattern.com go to team members; revenue from there is minimal but much appreciated.

What!? The donations button isn’t going to devs? That’s plain theft. I don’t get why you’re keeping it there.

In other words: it most definitely does go to the Team now; I just changed it (Apr. 12th) to use the same button from the Team’s page.

If you want to know what I myself have received, here’s the list of people, in full (as far as I can recall and trace in my Paypal log). I certainly can’t and don’t complain about what I have received.

Before reaching for your pitchfork and flaming torch, please remember that Textdrive provides a home for Textpattern.

Again, I don’t believe they made any promises to the Textpattern dev team.

Well, that’s reasonable; Dean is the guy that started it all, the one that did (I guess) the biggest part in terms of coding and ideas, the guy that paid all the expenses by himself when it comes to servers and stuff, at least until TXD was born. We really all owe him a lot.

Indeed. As I said, can’t complain about what we have received. We’re also hoping to be moved to a more reliable server that can handle the load. Maybe “they”, that mysterious group of shadowy figures, figured dollars = free hosting for Txp. But I really don’t know, like you I’ve no idea.

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#16 2007-04-28 10:21:09

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#17 2007-04-28 13:11:18

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#18 2007-04-28 15:51:43

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#19 2007-04-28 16:58:49

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#20 2007-04-28 17:19:13

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#21 2007-04-28 20:38:36

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#22 2007-04-28 20:48:44

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#23 2007-04-28 22:08:50

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#24 2007-04-28 22:45:24

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#25 2007-04-28 22:53:19

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#26 2007-04-28 23:03:24

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#27 2007-04-28 23:46:53

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#28 2007-04-28 23:48:58

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#29 2007-04-29 00:31:45

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

#30 2007-04-29 01:36:22

Re: [feedback] Developers pay

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