Re: paying for Han-Wen's development work

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

Graham Percival wrote:
> On 18-Aug-05, at 4:29 PM, Mark Van den Borre wrote:
>
> > > Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:
> > >
> > > >  1. apart from the "involved" people like you,  how do you convince
> > > > people to donate money?[...] Psychologically, it's much easier to 
> > > > part with money, if you get
> > > > something in return.
> >
> > This is not about donating. It's about investing.
>
>
> Absolutely.
>
> One (seemingly unlikely) reason in favor of subscription donation are
> webcomics.

> If people will give money to support a once-a-day webcomic (which can be
> quite interesting/funny/touching, but only for about 60 seconds per 
> day), then we
> should be able to get a non-trivial amount of money for lilypond.

The reason why I am skeptical of donations, is that I myself have never 
felt inclined to donate for open source software. On the other hand, if 
there is a tangible benefit in spending money (ie. business iso. 
charity), I easily buy what I want.

Take, for example, Linux Weekly News. I didn't hesitate for a moment 
when Linux Weekly News asked $ 60 / year for a subscription that would 
let me see LWN a week earlier.  The amount asked for a subscription 
doesn't have to match its costs (it shouldn't anyway, otherwise LWN 
would not have time left to write stories).

Likewise, it would be great if we could find a way to levy a small fee 
for some LilyPond related service. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to 
come up with a suitable model. Maybe someone has an idea?

I think the service should:

1. Offer something that isn't available or difficult to obtain without 
the subscription. For example, download access to LilyPond binaries is a 
nice idea, but due to the GPL, this is difficult enforce, and it's at 
aodds the enormous growth of Lily usage, which I also rather like.

2. Should be immediately "consumable". For example, instant access to 
some special download is good, support for "Han-Wen having food during 
the next month" isn't, because the donator/customer doesn't know whether 
 it will work for him.

Finally, I fear that such a service will need a lot of work setting up. 
In this respect, sponsored fetures are very nice for me.  I can easily 
experiment with pricing, delivery conditions, work-estimates,  etc. and 
if I make a mistake (I regularly do),  I can set different conditions 
for the next sponsored feature.

Sponsored features also satisfy the two conditions above: due to my l33t 
sk1llz, I can implement features almost immediately, and evidently, 
getting a feature in LilyPond is something you can't get anywhere else.

I know that Bram Molenaar, of VIM fame, has a community website set up, 
where you can exchange donations for "feature votes". For every X dollar 
donated, you get to vote what Bram will work on next. How does that sound?


--
 Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen