Donations

I’m thinking approaching closer to Christmas will be a good time to pick up this conversation. Will someone hit this thread in a week so it’ll pop back up and we can start getting some ideas percolating, please?

Hiya, ALL!

Great discussion going on here.

I’d like to chip in a question if you don’t mind. What about those that do not donate in financial figures? Take myself as an example. I own a site (like who doesn’t???) but it has been worked on in years literaly. I stop by here very often and input where I can. I make almost no money off the net at the moment (errr, did previously with another project) but have been more interested in being part of something that is growing and will be something that I am/will be proud of (modx).

How would you take of folks like me?
Those who have little time, lots of ideas, and little funds that come in through the net.

I am "not" trying to be a Scroge or such but realistic. This is one point that has always turned me off on many projects. Jibber Jabber on a forum = nothing in return. It’s a real shame.

I am not saying that is what is happening here but rather would like to head off before it becomes too late.



@ open source shows
I’d be more than willing to look into things here in Japan. 1 problem is that everything is down in Tokyo which requires; over night train, a ferry or at least a plane ride to get to One problem with living in a country that is basically a group of islands ;-)


@ foundations
What about the mozilla model?
Or about corporate sponsorship; id IBM (which is turning it’s attention to php now), ZEND, Red Hat and such?

As with any corporation you still need to keep in mind what a board of directors can do ... ;-) ask Jobs if you know what I mean.

@ publications
Any ideas of getting in real life print? I still leaf through magazines at the book store ... lolo, defintely a preWeb preson here yes, I still remember how to use the university "pine" program. nothign like a good ol’ green scale monitor and user grougps.


@ thoughts
I have confidence that the future will remain strong. And that when necessary developers, coders and such will soon become "official" when the need arises. More so when 1.0 is released I dare say that we’ll be having one hell of ride to follow.

@ suggestions
Maybe the need has come to build a preliminary support group. What I’m thinking here is a group that can start to work on the infrastructure of the main site dealing with areas like, support tickets, contribution code area, the donation page ;-), forums, and basic layout and traffic pattern control. I do have to admit that I haven’t visited the top area in ages ( I always come direct to the forums here).

Cheers!

That sounds cool to me.
I will try to make some time before christmas to be able to visit this forum. It would be great if we have a scheduled open discussion, so we set date and time for the discussion. We can use a multi-user chat program such as IRC or etc for us to discuss anything freely. What do you think about this? I can setup a multi-user chatroom with phpMyChat I believe, if you want to.

Carsten, I don’t think that you can’t contribute in other things. As for me, that’s as far as I could do. I’m not a really good programmer, and I’ve done nothing yet to the community, so I tried to do something, which in the form of donating money. As for you, I believe there are still space which you can fill in to support this community, which you already did I believe.

Looking for more reply and response, especially from the core team, the guy with a similar look avatar

Regards,
Wendy Novianto

Oh my... Carsten’s back! lol

FYI Wendy, Carsten and I go way back. Right Moyashi?

;)

:P

Well, I am into off season for high school. Been busting my butt on my pet project and needed a creative break

@ Wendy

Thanks!

YEP!

As long as Ryan doesn’t disown me

Cool,

So now I feel like I’m a real newbie here. Hope this coming meeting, I will know better with the people in here.

Again, lots of great ideas rolling !

Agreed with Carsten financial contribution is not the only kind of contribution which will help MODx in its development. I would even go as far as saying human contribution is even more essential : community is what makes great opensource applications, not money. Resources come in all forms, and time and dedication is most definitely a core one

It’s true key people are the core of a project and most of the time the very reason for its success or failure. We most definitely have to ensure our key people have everything they need to go on providing amazing code and support And this will be no small feat if the users base widens quickly in 2006. I most definitely agree on having a plan ready for this.

Yet, money should only be a means to an end, and of course donations should at least cover expenses such as hosting (needs will rise in this area in the future, no doubt !), hardware for our dear devs, and as big a retribution for the time spent writing this code as possible. My only worry here is "breaking" the community dynamics, this has been seen before, by focusing on means rather than ends. I don’t think this will happen, given the great spirit here But still, I thought it was necessary to mention it.

Paid premium support is most definitely something we will have to provide to our clients, and pooling resources is certainly a good idea. I for one won’t be able to go that way unless you guys speak french, or there are enough french people to help with this kind of support (I guess same will go for Wendy).

A fundation is certainly something worth considering to ensure no legal issue arise as to collecting donations (though here I don’t know anything about US law...). The only concern here could be managing paperwork for the fundation (again, I don’t know how it works and if there is heavy duty paperworks to handle), and time spent on paperwork would not be spent in development or community. Still playing devil’s advocate here.

This said, making plans for funding MODx development is necessary. My point of view on this matter is keeping the great spirit and not break the opensource dynamics. That would mean clean separation between support and premium support. Premium paid support should be hosted on a different domain altogether. That would also mean Snippets and Plugins should remain GPLed. In my mind, only business oriented Modules could stray away from the opensource model. If the client is able to fund development and agrees to the module being GPLed, this would even be nicer as it would allow us to provide great modules to everyone and ensure its evolution is fueled by opensource dynamics.

Ahhh, modules that are GPL’d.

oscommerce has this rule too. It works to a fair extent but you will also see those that build contributions with the hope of making "a little" back on there time and spirit investment. Many just gave up and slowly withered away. It’s a real shame to see that happen.

Maybe, it should be considered that "if" such said funds do arrive that a system be put in place that also takes care of members outside of the core foundation. As in spreading the wealth.

Hey, I know, the spirit of open source and what not but since X-mas is up and coming maybe the holiday spirit should not be forgotten through out the year.

lolo, here I’m writting away as if MODx is already rolling in money
Now, you all know my confidence level in this project ... 200%

Napolean Hill used monetary illustrations to support his points eventhough he like Dale Carnegie clearly were referring to much more than just green backs.

Yes, let’s definitely not forget the great spirit here and within the opensource movement