Re: My finances for working on LilyPond

[Bruno Ruviaro]

Hi David,

Please let me know via separate e-mail how I can donate.

And below is a suggestion of an alternative funding mechanism for you to
consider in the future.

It seems to me that Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/) might be a good
system in your case. (disclaimer: I have never used it myself, but I know
the founder and trust him, and I find the concept very interesting).

Patreon allows you to charge your supporters "per creation": in the case of
software development it would probably be the "release" or announcement of
a number of significant commits accumulated over a month or two. If you get
a number of happy Lilypond users to become your regular "patrons", you'd
get a more or less predictable and constant stream of support -- without
having to remind people to donate every time. For example, if I were your
supporter on the website, every time you make a release, Patreon would
automatically charge me a fixed amount (I decide how much), notify me of
your latest work, and transfer the money to you (minus Patreon's fee of
5%). From the patron side, a nice thing is that I can establish a cap for
my monthly donations (in case you do more releases in a month that I could
"afford").

Anyway, just an idea.

Thanks for your work on Lilypond. I only became a more serious user in the
last few months, and I can say I am a happy Lilypond user.

Bruno



On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 10:21 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:

>
> As you all know, my sole source of income are donations from happy
> LilyPond users.  It would appear that LilyPond users have stopped being
> happy with my work.
>
> I've taken a look at my last bank report.  In the last month I received:
>
> 1 donation of 200 EUR
> 1 donation of 100 EUR
> 2 donations of 25 EUR each.
>
> That's it (and honestly, the two large donations are embarrassing as
> they are by people who have done more than I ever did on LilyPond and
> who are helping people more on lists and forums than I do,
> respectively).  That does not even cover my rent, let alone medical
> insurance, food, repairs, clothes or other stuff.  Let alone pension
> funds or similar luxuries.  I'm currently bleeding about 800EUR per
> month for working on LilyPond.
>
> What has happened in the last month?
>
> address@hidden:/usr/local/tmp/lilypond$ git shortlog --since "1 month ago" -n 
> -s
>     48  David Kastrup
>     12  Phil Holmes
>      4  Jean-Charles Malahieude
>      2  Dan Eble
>      2  James Lowe
>      1  Masamichi Hosoda
>      1  Thomas Morley
>
> Well, 48 commits does not look like much, but I implemented
> functionality to attach to slurs to single notes in a chord in that time
> (important for tablature and piano music), designed and implemented an
> interface for working with multiple slurs per Voice, fixed several bugs,
> made c:5 in chord mode a power chord rather than equivalent to c major,
> created several low-level functions for manipulating graphical object
> properties like \offset does, removed a hard-to-understand internal
> object called a "simple closure" and prepared for more simplifications.
>
> I will likely work several more months on those internals and if the
> situation has not improved by then, call it quits.
>
> I thank all those who have supported me for this long.
>
> --
> David Kastrup
>
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