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

[John Emmas]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Davis" <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
Sent: 15 May 2008 15:45
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] subscription support down, your ideas sought
>
> Perhaps even more important for financial considerations is the ability
> to get some more developers able to work part- or even full-time on the
> project in order to advance it to a "tipping point" where adoption of
> the program by many more people becomes inevitable. Right now, there are
> several critical barriers, and the sooner we can get them torn down, the
> better.
>
Plugins anyone??  The bottom line here is that whilst users can be
encouraged, cajoled and shamed into subscribing, they can't be forced.  So
is there perhaps an argument for developing add-ons that WOULD be
chargeable?  Almost like a 'pro' version of Ardour (which isn't meant to
imply that Ardour isn't 'pro' at the moment...  ;-)).  Actually, I've
thought quite seriously about releasing features in a chargeable plug-in.
And if users would pay I'd have no qualms about donating a percentage to the
overall upkeep of Ardour.  I doubt if any developer would.

But are there enough features that could be implemented as plugins?  And is
there a case for offering discount prices to those users who subscribe
regularly?  And would that in itself encourage more subscribers?  I'm afraid
I don't know the answers to these questions but I feel they're worth asking.

John



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Davis" <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com>
To: "Svend-Erik Madsen" <sv-e at sv-e.dk>
Cc: <ardour-users at lists.ardour.org>
Sent: 15 May 2008 15:45
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] subscription support down, your ideas sought


>
> On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 17:30 +0200, Svend-Erik Madsen wrote:
>> Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
>> > Paul, would you care to weigh in on the PayPal issue, or rather the
>> > issue of finding an alternate method that meets your needs?
>> >
>> >
>> Hi all
>>
>> If the payment method is becoming a political issue it's not gonna help
>> his finances anyway.
>
> I'm refraining from commenting for a while because I think its just good
> for me to watch the discussion. However, I do want to make something
> really clear: there is no current issue with *MY* finances.
>
> The issue of financial support for Ardour relate more to the long term
> stability of the support. There are very few open source projects around
> of a scale approaching Ardour's that do not have at least 1 person paid
> to work on their continuing development, and so it is here - this
> program will move only very, very slowly toward the level of
> functionality that most of us want if its all done in 2hr chunks in the
> evenings.
>
> Perhaps even more important for financial considerations is the ability
> to get some more developers able to work part- or even full-time on the
> project in order to advance it to a "tipping point" where adoption of
> the program by many more people becomes inevitable. Right now, there are
> several critical barriers, and the sooner we can get them torn down, the
> better.
>
> There are personal issues wrapped up in all this of course. I am at an
> age where most programmers would be on 1 (or more) of 3 likely career
> tracks:
>
> 1) making a substantive income from sales
> 2) being paid by a company that is doing (1)
> 3) waiting to be bought out by Google or Microsoft
>
> None of these appy to Ardour, which puts me in a situation that is not
> particularly optimistic over the long term.
>
> --p
>
>
>
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