[Ardour-Dev] Website upgrades

[Patrick Shirkey]

Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> Its not web or database for what I was referring to.  As you have 
> already said, shopping cart systems and taking people's money is 
> easy.  Showing responsible usage of that money is another ball of wax 
> that leaves the realm of strictly programming.
>
> Let me try to give an example....
>
> In my ideal world, when people make a pledge for a feature, it would 
> allow for the pledge to be held ina  third party account that would 
> not be touched by either party until the work is done or the feature 
> request is rejected for some reason, with the money falling back on 
> either party at that point.  It is this third party account that would 
> be unrelated to the coding of such a system, and much more to do with 
> banking.
>
> Now to be honest that is going to be an ideal world I personally never 
> to see.  I think the honor pledge works well enough for Ardour, and 
> likely many people would prefer such a system, and I don't have any 
> significant hangup on using it either.  Likewise paying to individual 
> developers gets handled by Paul IIRC, which would stay the same either 
> way, but still requires work outside of programming, namely getting 
> information to pay to etc. as well as paying to it.  So in either 
> case, you are doing one of two things, either coordinating for direct 
> payments to the developers, which I don't know of a system off hand 
> that would handle payments to multiple parties like that very well(For 
> example a one time developers comes in, submits a patch to fix a bug, 
> much less if multiple developers are working on a feature or bug at 
> the same time), or you are dealing with a centralized account,a nd 
> ahve someone in the background that has to handle all the accounting 
> side of things to pay the developers.  The latter is the current 
> method with Paul handling it as it is, which to be honest is probably 
> the better method until situations change.
>
> Again all this is my own opinion, but it has more to do with than just 
> the programming side of things.
>

This is a reasonable concern. If Ardour was a company (not LAS) it would 
have a financial officer, accounts manager and secretary to manage all 
of the above.

I think monthly or quarterly payouts from Paul would be manageable if 
the backend admin interface was keeping track of the amounts to be 
distributed.

I'm guessing that everything is currently handled with Paypal anyway 
which means everything can be done online from pretty much anywhere in 
the world.

The main issue is integrating mantis with a funds management interface 
for easy tracking.

We have the opportunity to make Ardour into a sustainable business for 
more than just one person with this system.

I'm not sure how much of the above has already been setup. I can't 
imagine that Paul has been doing everything manually for the past 5 years.



>           Seablade
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Patrick Shirkey 
> <pshirkey at boosthardware.com <mailto:pshirkey at boosthardware.com>> wrote:
>
>     Thomas Vecchione wrote:
>
>
>
>         On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Patrick Shirkey
>         <pshirkey at boosthardware.com
>         <mailto:pshirkey at boosthardware.com>
>         <mailto:pshirkey at boosthardware.com
>         <mailto:pshirkey at boosthardware.com>>> wrote:
>
>            Thomas Vecchione wrote:
>
>                At the moment there are already upgrades happening in the
>                background I have been told, so I haven't looked to
>         closely at
>                specific work.  Drupal/Mantis integration has some work
>                already done on it in fact in the Drupal world(bugbits
>         IIRC is
>                the name of the module, currently being ported to D6, will
>                skip D5), but until other tings are done I can't look to
>                closely at it to know whether that would work for us or
>         not.
>
>            It seems Paul or someone else is working on a more integrated
>            system.  I'm happy to assist with the code.
>
>            I think it would be helpful to identify the exact issues
>         that need
>            to be fixed in the Mantis system.
>
>            1: The front page doesn't show the (top 10) pledged amounts or
>            monies received for Mantis bugs/requests
>            2: When making a pledge it should be possible to donate
>         immediately
>            3: We need a target cost for each bug and feature request
>         so that
>            we can see how close the pledges and donations are to the goal.
>            When the goal is reached it should be scheduled for
>         development.
>            4: When a pledge is fulfilled it should be made visible on the
>            front page. Maybe a seperate module with the total amount
>         paid and
>            target for dev which clicks through to a breakdown of how many
>            people have contributed/pledged and optionally their names. It
>            could be an option to have your name displayed when you
>         make the
>            payment/pledge.
>
>
>
>            The above would go along way to making the system more
>         dynamic and
>            transparent which should encourage more people to
>         contribute and
>            most importantly to contribute regularly.
>
>
>         The problem, and it is already known, is that what you have
>         described is more than coding issues.  It has to do with how
>         to handle the money, and how to pay out to individual
>         developers.  There are many options, but many of the more
>         suitable options require a better infrastructure than is
>         currently availiable form Ardour at a financial level.  This
>         would affect paying out to devs individually, as well as
>         handlin pledges so that they aren't paid until the
>         functionality it fulfilled, but is set aside on the pledge.
>
>     So, we need to integrate zencart?
>
>     That will give us a complete administrative interface for managing
>     payments. Otherwise we can roll our own.
>
>     We are supposed to be very good at developing. Doing this web and
>     database stuff is bread and butter for most of us.
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Patrick Shirkey
>     Boost Hardware Ltd.
>
>
>
>


-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.