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

[Jamie McLaughlin]

Hi all,

I strongly feel that the subscription and sponsorship model is the only
right way to finance an Open Source project. I would be completely
against a model where you had to pay to download. Such a model would
inevitably hinder the distribution of the software, and wide
distribution is in my opinion the number one priority for any Open
Source project.

I still believe that the single most significant factor holding back the
growth of many Open Source projects is ignorance, regarding both the
fact that these projects exist, and how close they often come to
matching or surpassing their commercial rivals. There is a good reason
that commercial companies often absorb an initial loss in order to
distribute their packages and get people to use them: It is because
having people actively using and becoming used to your software is
invaluable.

Therefore, I feel that making it harder to download and use Ardour would
be completely the wrong approach. In fact, I am sure that it would play
into the hands of those who rather wish Ardour didn't exist.

I would urge anyone who uses Ardour to subscribe. It really is a very
small amount of money to ensure the development of a Free, highly
effective DAW which will in time outshine its commercial rivals - and in
many respects already does.

Jamie

--

Paul Davis wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 14:04 +0100, Cassiel wrote:
>> Ardour is great, for sure, but if the goal is to earn 5000$ each month
>> from 200-300 end users I would suggest to constitute a company and
>> simply sell Ardour just like any other proprietary software and
>> without the community support for testing and bug reporting. 
> 
> the goal is to earn $7000 a month from 2000 contributing users and 5
> companies. that would still represent a substantial paycut over what i
> would earn if i took a conventional job as a programmer, and would be
> without any other benefits (no health insurance, no pension), but it
> would be worth it to be able to keep working on this project.
> 
> say, US$2.50 a month from each of 2000 users plus $400/month from 5
> companies. how hard could it be? (thats a rhetorical question).
> 
> and these numbers don't reflect the substantial value of the work of
> other developers.
> 
> --p
> 
> 
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