Re: Supporting my work on LilyPond financially

[Noeck]

Hi,

I was thinking about fund raising for some days now. I see several
possible sources for supporting LP financially:

1) Private donations from developers:
This seems to be partly the case and you have my deep respect that you
both work for and spend money on LP. This group probably stays
relatively small.

2) Private donations from hobby users:
Probably most users are not paid for their music engraving. If LP would
not exist (nor some other free (as in free beer) software), they might
have to pay for Finale (600$) or Sibelius (550€). But probably they
would go with a light version of these programs (50$ - 120€). Just to
have an idea what would be to spend otherwise (without LP).
I write this to both sides: Spending about 100€ in 2 years is quite a
lot if you use LP just for fun, not spending anything is quite cheap for
such a great program.

Here I would really encourage people using LP to think about this and
help financially with a realistic amount of money, because there is need
for it. Even if it is not much, the sheer number of users can contribute
significantly.

3) Private donations from professionals:
If professionals could be convinced that spending the money on LP
development rather than on commercial products is beneficial also for
them that would be great. How? Does someone have a closer relation to
this occupational group than I do and has any ideas how to promote LP?

4) Donations/payments from institutions:
I can not guess the user base, but I assume that institutional support
is needed for sustainability and long term support. So far I have only
heard about musicians in the LP community who are very tech-savvy and/or
use linux anyway.
Somehow the benefits of LP should be made clearer for music/composing
professors the fact that many things can be made doable which are not up
to now with any program. If his/her chair is supporting LP, this program
could be a showpiece project (high quality engraving, open and free
software, international project, huge amount of work already done and
therefore a lot to show at low cost). Students in a paid assistant job
could work on LP, this particularly in the computer science departments.
Universities should be a place where new ways are chosen and new ideas
pushed forward.
And music teachers/schools could support it as licences for engraving
software are mostly unaffordable for schools, but if everything is set
up, pupils can write { a4 g f } and learn a program that everyone can
use at home. So schools could teach this and offer a free software and
support LP also financially. For music teachers OOoLy is so convenient
to produce worksheets.
So, in my opinion, universities and schools should be convinced of LP,
because 100€ for a single person is quite something, but a remarkably
good project which can bring some good publicity could be worth much
more for such institutions. I personally don't understand why LP is not
common at music universities but that's probably a chicken-or-the-egg
thing and the lack of large scale marketing. But this would also need
official contacts in the LP team who are responsible and can represent
LP towards these institutions.


tl;dr
My summary: LP would need either a large user base with small donations
(like wikipedia partly) or institutions behind it (I'm thinking about
the Document Foundation or Linux, in this case more about universities).

Cheers,
Joram