Sponsoring modules, plugins, snippets development

Well my take on this : if I can manage to sponsor some module/plugin/snippet development and have the community benefit from it, I guess nobody will be agains it

Quote from: edge at Mar 09, 2006, 08:16 PM

Would you spend 1000’s of hours writing the module your client wants, will they pay for all your time and will they then be happy to say "Although its cost me £5000, you can add this to MODx so others customers, maybe our competitors, can have it for nothing, I really don’t think so.

Well I hope you’re wrong here. Maybe I am naive or idealistic but I think I can have them agree to this kind of bargain...

What is their alternative ?

Another opensource application ? might be that Joomla, Drupal or whatever has just the module they need, but will they get the same template flexibility, speed and cost of deployment ? I really think we have an edge here

A commercial application ? wow, sure guys but it will cost clients a lot more € to get the equivalent (if it exists at all ) In my case, I work with small and medium businesses. Commercial CMS are simply out of play with those, too expensive or inadequate...

But I sure can get them to invest a few more € if they want something to fit specific needs. Why should they not agree to GPL ? If you apply this on a large enough scale, they might end up paying for features used by their competitors, but that’s also true of the opposite : they might just benefit from a feature that one of their "competitor" has financed...

Now, you’re right about the developper perspective : pretty tempting to sell commercial addons ! It sure is understandable. Yet IMHO the whole opensource model is based on "sell services not products". You can sell your service as a developper, and it’s only normal to get something out of your skills. But selling an addon ? Well that’s the M$ model and I am pretty much convinced it will come to an end.

Not convinced ? Well, wait till Linux is as user friendly as Windows : it’s almost there already and once M$ launches its control freak hardware DRM dependent OS, people will just switch one by one : who wants to throw out its whole mp3 and divX collection ? anyone ? well... not me

I pretty much agree with Ryan that if you start selling those addons, opensource alternatives will emerge and might just be better than the paid version. Why ? Well for starters the whole turn-on of OS projects is the collective intelligence and added value. Community is key to build "another kind of products" (I’ll even go as far as saying this could be the beginning of a new economic model for the future... ).

MODx is a fine example of this...

Would you spend 1000’s of hours writing the module your client wants, will they pay for all your time and will they then be happy to say "Although its cost me £5000, you can add this to MODx so others customers, maybe our competitors, can have it for nothing, I really don’t think so.

I’ve had too much to say already, but here’s how I look at this issue: If everything was shared with the community, for my 5000 I’d get 1,000,000 worth of other projects in return. It becomes a matter not of specific contribution, but rather building a library of functions that all can use.

That’s the trade-off, the ROI and the practical side of this, as I see it.

Duane

Wow . . . we really got some cool ideas and opinions out of all this!

Can’t remember where I saw it and been trying to extract it from my browser history ever since, but to no avail. There was an open source project I saw recently (couple of months ago) that had, in my opinion, a very effective way of raising cash for "extra" functionality.

In the support forums they had a section called "commercial add-ons". The sticky explained that the commercial add-ons area was for those who needed to hire the project’s developers for special tasks not part of the distribution. It also went to great pains to explain while the add-on was being paid for, it would be added to the distribution once completed.

There was then two methods of raising the cash. Either the person/company requesting the add-on could absorb all of the costs or the request could be moved to a sub-section called "raising the cash" (it wasn’t called that exactly, but it was something close!). If the latter option was chosen, a description of the commercial add-on was posted with a summary on how long the add-on was likely to take to build, how much, therefore, the add-on was going to cost and a running total of how much of the total cost had been raised.

At any point the person/company requesting the add-on in the first place could pay the difference between what had been raised to date by other users and the estimated cost of the project or just sit back and hope that enough people would be interested to raise money for the whole thing. I’m sure there was something in there about the original person/company requesting the add-on had to pay a minimum donation of 10% of the total estimated cost before it went into the "raising the cash" subsection.

Does anyone recognise or seen this model before? I’m not sure that it was another CMS, I know it was a new project!?!

Well anway - maybe modx may find that useful

I think there is a large commercial developement operation around Drupal and EZ Publish. Typo3 most likely also due to it’s inherrent complexity dictating frequent professional assistance to get sites built. Plainblack (WebGUI) rakes in loads of cash every year with their commercial hosting as well.

There’s four relatively straightforward avenues for revenues:

1) Pro-grade hosting ($50/month and up) -- leave the sub $20/month stuff to large hosting organizations who have the vast resources/staff in place to deal with that type of volume situation and there’d hopefully be a referral program in place for thier accounts that come from MODx. The pro grade hosting in fact could be done with an outside partner.

2) Commercial/Premium support -- early access to development versions (like the SMF Charter Memeberships) and paid support tickets to solve problems on users behalf. Annual subscriptions ($99 give or take) or support tickets sold for a particular rate.

3) Commercial Development -- the Core team starts taking on commercial projects for clients. Drupal did this and has a lot of government and community/organzation/foundation work as I understand it, the risk here is that Commercial Development becomes the focus and project development begins to take a back seat. I think this is what has happened at OS Commerce, for example.

4) Donations -- sounds good in theory, but not a viable model for even basic survival without turning into a perpetual telethon and beg-fest for donations.

5) MODx Commercial Development Referral Program -- borrow the elance/rent-a-coder model by have a group of professional, certified or community rated developers that have access to bid on commercial projects, with a percentage of the jobs going to the MODx project.

Regardless of any of the above happening, there has to be a formal business built to act as the holding entity for revenues. This could easily in itself cost $2500-5000 to form a foundation in legal and accounting expenses and at least an equal amount every year at the minimum to just operate it. IOW, there is no easy solution but we’re thinking hard about it.

Borrowing the Elance model might be best, since there are going to be mods bid out anyway. Look at what happened with phpnuke and some of the shopping carts, especially oscommerce. Though I don’t pay attention to the freelance markets like I once did since I’m getting more than enough work through my website, from what quick scanning I’m doing a day doesn’t go by without a request for a bid on one of those programs to either mod it, integrate it with something else, or skin it. When modx breaks the barrier that will to some degree happen here too, so why not capitalize on it?

I do suggest putting some of the more important major mods that the devs and community wish to control on a list with the specification that any code done on one of those major mods is going back to the community as open source, but that people who are willing to contribute with that in mind will be listed on a sponsor list with a linkback. I’m thinking here of anything that will shape the future development and direction that ModX goes.

I see no contradiction beween an open-source CMFramework and a commercial set of applications built on that framework.

Cf Ellington built on top of Django (offered for analogy only).

I would gravitate away from any effort to integrate open-source and commercial communities/metaphors. Why not square the circle first for us?

It is true that some commercial stuff built on top of ModX won’t ever go to the open stuff ... most likely, because it offers competitive advantage. Well, that is precisely the reason for doing commerical software, whether the advantage goes to the customer or the developer (selling modules).

Open-source is a gift economy; commercial isn’t. Both are needful; both have strengths and weaknesses.

I italicized ’framework’ for this reason. On the assumption ’framework’ is architecturally accurate and not primarily a marketing wish (I just don’t know ModX well enough yet to say), I think the common-sense solution is free framework plus free OR commercial applications guided variously by colliding but friendly self-interests.

Quote from: rthrash at Mar 12, 2006, 05:27 PM

1) Pro-grade hosting ($50/month and up) -- leave the sub $20/month stuff to large hosting organizations who have the vast resources/staff in place to deal with that type of volume situation and there’d hopefully be a referral program in place for thier accounts that come from MODx. The pro grade hosting in fact could be done with an outside partner.

Is this something your setting up, or wanting others to set up with a commission going to modX ?

Though the personalities here are very different, and the spirit here is VASTLY different, to the point where I don’t think any of this type of thing would occur with ModX, I really think there are lessons to be learned from some of the not so good things happening elsewhere.

I don’t ever wish to see happen here the disintegration of focus on a common goal for the common good that has happened at WordPress. And, according to those close to the source, most of that has taken place because of the "Founding Father" and his chase after the almighty dollar. WordPress has lost some good devs recently, and those devs have stated their reasons which have ranged from the autocratic attitude of their Fearless Leader, and his trashing of projects that the devs want, and the community wants but that don’t fit into his "vi$ion", to his pimping of a hosting deal with Yahoo which is so pitiful that it’s created much more bad press than good. He also released what was in essence beta software and called it a final release, to coincide with his yahoo deal, which threw the community into a tailspin. Oh, and he "upgraded" the forum the same day he released the not called beta software. The new forum software was written by him and even more untested than his new wordpress release. That was right around Christmas. The forum search still doesn’t work. People over on the forum and on Trac are disgruntled and grumbly. Though it’s still a great community it isn’t the same.

There’s a fine line to be walked here. David’s idea of pledges of money to be turned over at completion of a project is a great one. I’m too old to be a starry eyed idealist, so the fact that it appeals to me and I think it could work comes from having seen how many other open source communities function (and screw up royally) and where the pitfalls may lie. I really think this type of scheme can be a great motivator to all. And I, for one, have no problem with kicking a few bucks into the kitty when I’ve landed a modx skin contract, as long as I feel my money is going to good use in improving the program and allowing me to land more contracts, whether it’s done through an elance type system or through the honor system.

I am somewhat leery of putting the dev team out there for huge work (as if it’s my decision to make!) I think you folks will, if you continue to build a great program, reap the benefits since it’s so easy for decision makers to see the quality of your work -- which will make it easy for them to cough up the dough for extended support and maybe minor customization. There may be some lean times, as there are in any open source community, but the good stuff WILL come as long as everybody keeps the attitude they have now, and keeps the focus in the right place.

The biggest thing you can learn from the WordPress thing (and I think maybe the Etomite situation was similar) is that you can never ignore what your user base is saying they need. They are the driving force, their needs and your ability to meet those needs will be the determinant in whether this project is a success.

Income streams are ’very’ important as a glue to hold it all together, what I’m suggesting is to use subtle means of generating revenue with which to keep the dev team focused on the job - rather than getting pissed that their work isn’t being remunerated.

I don’t think they want hand-outs, and so what if a few of us scatter a few pennies here and there, really, that isn’t going to stop the demons from calling ... they have to pay the bills - just like us.

You’ve highlighted some big mistakes made by others which is good, the core team here doesn’t need to be actively thinking $$$ if a subdivision enterprises on their behalf, and on the backs of what they’ve done, in order to provide a sustainable and growing revenue with which those involved in the enterprise would also benefit.

I see it as a win win - or at least an alternative to other ’possible’ outcomes.

Guys, don’t worry I don’t think we will fall into the $ trap... I very much agree with your analysis of the recent turn of events @WordPress. Matt seems to have great hopes for automattic but the way things are being handled is not necessarily a good thing for WordPress itself IMHO. For very different reason, Textpattern has suffered a great deal from Dean being away from the app’s development and the community ever since lauching TextDrive. With the Joyent buyout, it’s even more true... what followed lead some of us textpattern old timers to ask for some kind of basic organization and more communication. Finally, this has brought some improvement but after two years of comittment to txp I decided to "retire" from moderating the french community and writing the doc. The $ trap can take many forms...

Anyway, I agree that making $ with opensource projects is a fine line. It’s a balance to maintain and more importantly it’s a "spirit". This does not mean we should not be very careful to set up a sustainable development model : Ryan, Raymond, Jason and the team have put in hundreds of hours into this project and they all have bills to pay, a family to support and all...

The thing is, as long as the community gives back to the devs (can be donations, can be giving back a share of what you earn with the software, or also very important : contributing) and the devs don’t fall into the "fast & big bucks" syndrom, we’ll be fine. I think you can sell services and make a profitable living out of it, especially considering the great talents there are on this team. And to me, there is a big difference between 1) selling services (the premium paid support is a very nice idea) or 2) setting up a way to finance developments that wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run (core, major modules - plugins or snippets) without some kind of pledge or whatever system and 3) selling software or addons. Number 3 is not the way to go, it’s clear to me.

As for being "leery of putting the dev team out there for huge work", that’s a very good point. The way I see it, it’s a reminder that we should come up with ideas to make sure developping modules, plugins and snippets isn’t more rewarding financially than developping the core. The only idea that comes to mind is having a share of those development given back to the devs working on the core.

I like the idea. Like kickass I am not a young starry eyed idealist (though I am an idealist of some kind ), and the reason why I’ll donate a share of every contract I get working with MODx (My first 3 payment are coming up next month) is that I simply want the project to go on because MODx has become the most important tool for me. I like the "putting my money where my mouth is" sentence that I read somewhere when I came accross when I joined this community. That’s exactly the concept to me. I want MODx to keep improving, because I will get more contracts, then I’ll give more back and so on.. like Starbuck says, luckily if enough people believe in this, we’ll have a win-win situation...