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

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Thu, 8 Jan 2009, Patrick Shirkey wrote:

>>  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.

One subscription option that would be nice to see is the ability to choose 
your own monthly subscription level, keeping the existing USD 10/4/1 
options as minimums.  I've been a user of Ardour since the 0.99 days 
and a subscriber for around a year and a half, and would gladly subscribe 
for more than $10/month if the option were available.  I've used Ardour 
on several projects, including some paying gigs, and it's proven its 
worth to me repeatedly in the time I've been using it.

I also realize this would only partially address the situation (more money 
to fund the development of Ardour, but the number of paying subscribers in 
relation to the total user population remains pretty much unchanged), but 
it's a start :)

jms