[Ardour-Dev] funding priorities

[Patrick Shirkey]

Hi,

Here's an update of the list for people to chew on.

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1: Grants
2: Mantis integration with website
3: Fundraiser
4: Mantis/website integration with Ardour interface: rss feed/ticker, 
embedded browser
5: Donate header on website
6: Made with Ardour CD
7: Ardour Live boot CD
8: Paid for SVN
9: Paid License to: disable crippled interface, Get access to more 
features, Disable RSS ticker
10: Glossy brochure for trade shows
11: Advertising in industry magazines
12: Celebrity endorsement
13: Approaching State run media companies with Ardour as a industry 
grade product.
14: Funding from a well resourced Patron
15: Funding from a Company in the entertainment/media business
16: More subscriptions
17: Subscriptions at different rates
18: Port to windows
19: Official vst support. Seperate binary plugin for sale via ardour.org
20: Nightly binary builds
21: LV2 plugin set with well designed guis
22: Alternate payment gateway.
23: Donate to Ardour button
24: Build and sell custom built PC's and related stuff online
25: Paid support at ardour.org
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1) earn money with services, not with software

- payed support
- giving lectures | about using ardour | about writing audio software

   1.  subscription: For the advances hobbyist/small business 
professional. A
monthly fee without obligations, but for a lot of good karma.
   2. fan gear: Micropayment shares from spreadshirt.net (for europe) and
zazzle.com (u.s.)
          * create european mirror for ardour
          * create shop in spreadshirt.net
   3. institutional deals: installations in universities, educational
institutes, etc. Comes with support.
          * create list of institutions already using ardour
          * create list of institutions to contact
          * organize campus tours
   4. professional deals: individual/company setups with support
   5. charge for precompiled packages, e.g. for OS X
   6. corporate deals: Preinstalled systems/appliances




2) Change licences, commercial version, for example:

- Linux version is GPL and free
- make a payed version for Mac (and Windows)
- Make a free demo version (SAE-version?) for Mac (and Windows)

3) Make contracts with hardware suppliers

4) Helping ICT students

- payed assistantship  (e.g. students can take part in the dev process 
and pay Paul as a teacher (maybe the paying can be done by ICT schools 
and universities?)

5) Educate talented software programmers:

- Let talented developers take part in the Ardour team and give them 
help to learn to work with C++ and audio.  You can make some kind of 
social contract, 'we help you develop you c++ and audio programming 
skills, after 6 months assistantship, you will be an active member of 
the Ardour team for at least one year (for example).
This lightens the burden of Paul (he could do his Ardour work part-time) 
and helps the development of Ardour also in the future.



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So, just to sum what I think Ardour needs to become really popular DAW:
- MIDI
- VSTi support
- VST getchunk/setchunk support for N.I. Kontakt & similar
- VST GetTimeInfo support for Celemony Melodine & similar
- MIDI multitimbral support (the one that Rosegarden lacks)
- Latency compensation (I don't know if there is any)
- Correct VST window placement =)

And just the things I dream of:
- Clip realtime effects (what Cubase lacks)
- Score editor for printing MIDI parts.




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My idea is building a piece of hardware like that:

Take expresscard, put in a number of ICE1712
and some nice DAC/ADC together with a MIDI chip,
(perhaps make it modular to being able to add more ICEs, if needed),
find someone in China, Malaysia (or I can find one here in Indonesia)
who assembles it.
Bundle with ardour, write an ASIO/Coreaudio driver. Sell it.
Let the gain go into a foundation.


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-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.