[Ardour-Users] Could this solve Ardour's financial headache?

[Patrick Shirkey]

Dewey Smolka wrote:
>> I couldn't
>> help wondering if this might offer a solution for Ardour's ongoing financial
>> dilemma...?
>>     
>
>
> I've been using Ardour for about a year, and have been at least
> following the subject lines for list mail the whole time.
>
> What exactly is the ongoing financial dilemma? 


The issue is that Ardour development is not being funded at the rate 
that makes it viable for the developers to focus as much time as 
possible on the various outstanding feature requests from the non 
financially contributing members of the community. The developers 
receive sponsorship from companies and  there are around 100 active 
monthly subscriptions. The money that is received does not accurately 
represent the active user base estimated to be between 10 - 20,000 users 
and resources are allocated mostly to work on issues and features 
requested by the financial donors which means many requests on Mantis 
are not being given much more than a glance which frustrates the people 
who have made the suggestions.

> Are you sure you're
> approaching the problem in the right way and looking at all the
> options and opportunities.
>
>   
We are all open to suggestions but implementing them has turned out to 
be a time consuming task which is not always possible to give priority 
to or conversely the motivation is lacking or the ideas have not been 
deemed worthy of spending time on.

On the one hand we have a large user base of Linux/Mac guys who 
generally do things for free or as cheaply as possible and on the other 
hand we have the lead developers who are trying to support their 
families and pay for their retirement etc...

A program of the scale of Ardour with as many active users should be 
able to fund at least three full time developers or a team of 10 part 
timers/contractors.



Cheers.

-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.