[Ardour-Users] subscription support down, your ideas sought

[Steven Chamberlain]

Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> ...as a coding project, we might be better placed to offer the
> ability to put bounties on specific features or bugs...

That sounds like an excellent idea to me.  People would be encouraged to 
donate as a result of that, voting with their dollars over what gets 
done next (although it seems Paul was preferring subscriptions over 
one-off donations).

However the real pay-off might come in the long-term.  If priority is 
given to features with the most money on them, that probably means 
Ardour implements or fixes features that have the greatest commercial 
value.  Therefore, Ardour becomes more useful to organisations or 
individuals who make money from Ardour, and could see a rise in 
subscriptions and major sponsorships.

Although this might even seem like a *bad* thing to some...

Patrick Shirkey wrote:
 > IMO the freeloaders who use ardour and don't contribute back to the
 > community are ripping all the rest of us off who enable them to use
 > the software.

That sounds quite the opposite of the spirit of *free* (in both senses), 
open-source software.  There may be a risk of alienating the majority of 
Ardour's user base in order to please the major sponsors.  Some 
developers might be unhappy too.

But it sounds to me like this is the way Paul would like it to go -- 
Ardour as it is today may not have been possible without funding.

Thomas Vecchione wrote:
 > put bounties on specific features or bugs...
 >
> Possibly by pledging their subscription dollars?

I believe Mantis may already have a feature for sponsoring an issue with 
one-off payments (I have seen it at http://issues.outoforder.cc/ ), so 
that might be the easiest thing to implement.  But if people subscribe 
to Ardour it only seems fair that they still have control over exactly 
where their money goes.  Perhaps by receiving 'credits' which can then 
(if they want) be spent on whichever issues they choose.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven at pyro.eu.org