Sponsoring lilypond development Was Re: Score parts: instrument and duration

[Pedro Kröger]

Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

> I wouldn't worry about that.  I haven't been afraid of large 
> refactorings in the past (in fact, we have a very big one -- possibly 
> the biggest in the history of lily -- coming up).

just curious, which one is that?

> The real worry is a financial thing. If not enough people sponsor 
> LilyPond development, I shall be forced to take up a day job again. In 
> this event, it is likely that development of Lily will stagnate.

I've been thinking a lot about this. here are some ideas:

naturally we have to have actions in both short and long time terms. 

I propose we have a short campaign among lily users to raise some
money. That would help while we are working on the next major version
and thinking and working in medium and long time frame actions for
founding. I don't know how many people are here or in lily-users, but if
we could get 100 people to contribute $20 for 6 months, that would
guarantee a monthly $2000 during 6 months (I have no idea about much one
need to live in the Netherlands, I'm using these figures just as an
example). That's sound reasonable to me. I assume that it's easier for
most people to contribute with $10-30 for a period of time like 6 months
than to donate three number figures at once (e.g. $200). At least it is
easier to me. I also assume that probably that's the reason that people
don't contribute more offen, because they think that it will not make a
difference to contribute such a small amount as $20. I believe we could
start this campaign right away.

That's one idea, where a few users will help donating a little. Another
idea is to start a somewhat bigger campaign trying to raise the money
for this 6 month period at once. That would involve universities, music
centers, and institutions like that.

Another thing more in the medium/long term side. I suppose there is a
"market" among researchers that use music coding like darms and
guido. If we could seduce they to use lilypond, maybe they would help
arranging donations (from research grants and things like that). And
maybe that would be the start of having lilypond used in the
universities labs. When I lived in US they had finale and sibelius on
mac and pc computers. If they started having lilypond we could offer
some sort of support, courses, printed documentation, and so on. I don't
know, I feel that this is a niche that we can explore more than the
"real marked". Of course doing that takes time, but to be able to get
more founding we have to work making lilypond more known.

I believe we are in the right track anyway, making lilypond easier for
non-geeks to use. Maybe we could have more marketing texts,
ready-to-print pamphlets, and a few showcase examples. We have many
examples, but I suppose that having a few bars of Stravinsky's "Le
Sacre" or Wagner's "Das Rheingold" will impress people :-)

Is SCORE still been developed? I remember it used to be *really*
expensive ($500-1000). Hum, that's may be a good niche, stealing Score
users :-) well, of course we would need to make good converters and the
like. That's mean more development time and more money for that....

What you guys think?

Pedro