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

[Patrick Shirkey]

Paul Davis wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 21:57 +0000, John Rigg wrote:
>
>   
>> I don't object to paying for Ardour (and I certainly don't begrudge
>> the meagre subscription fee) but the extra effort of removing
>> this stuff before being able to use the latest code would
>> probably discourage me from doing so. It has to be possible to
>> get svn code that is free of these things even if it means paying.
>>     
>
> Aha! So the plan emerges. I totally screw up the public releases with
> blinking banner ads, RSS tickers, nag screens and IP-based "phone home"
> stuff, making the program very unpleasant to use and THEN ... start
> charging for access to the "clean" version only available via for-fee
> SVN. 
>
> I love it when a plan comes together!
>
>   
Yes, but it is only the the beginning of the fiendish plan, 
Bwaahahahahahahaha!!!!

As you said earlier you can be pessimistic about these things. I'm sure 
that we can implement this in a slightly classier way than described above.

 From my experience most people don't expect to get everything for free. 
When they do they expect to get a crappier product. Because Ardour is 
not a crappy product you are essentially forcing people to focus on the 
real issues and compare them to other paid for apps. Why not be more 
direct in encouraging people to contribute directly via the interface so 
they can feel they are part of a thriving community?

Many of the paid for apps that I have to use have similar home pages 
which open by default when the app is started which list recent updates 
and  latest news etc... It's an industry standard.

By leaving the user to figure out for themselves how to get involved you 
are not leveraging the numbers that are actively using the app. One 
could argue (and I will right now) that in effect you are actively 
crippling the potential for funding from the user community and doing a 
disservice to the users by not making it more obvious that you want them 
to contribute to the development.

There are ways to make the functionality listed above work in a smooth, 
non obstructive and friendly way. If the hardened Linux guys don't like 
it then they can disable it at compile time. If people who distribute 
apps want to disable the features then they can do that too. However by 
far the majority of people will support you and probably enjoy being 
part of a thriving community. I suspect even Mark will not release a 
private version for Gentoo users once he sees the real positive affects 
of getting the full community involved in funding and contributing to 
development.





Cheers.


-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.