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

[Stephen Doonan]

Christopher Stamper wrote:
>> * Donate for your favorite features -- Perhaps a list of features
>> that developers are working on or plan to work on, or which are
>> requested by users, can appear on a web page. Each feature would
>> have a "Donate to  this
>> feature" button (linked to PayPal for example), and developers
>> would give priority to and work more on the features that receive
>> the most  donations.
>> (I would probably donate fairly regularly to MIDI-related features,
>> for example).
>> 
> How is this different than the Mantis feature request donation? I 
> don't understand.
> 
> 
> The difference is that this guy hardly knows what 'mantis' is... ;-)
> 
> And I doubt that I'm alone.



You're not alone, Christopher. :-)

I had to search for mantis too by clicking random links at Ardour.org, 
and then, Mantis looked like a bug-tracking tool, not a revenue 
generating donations site. I still can't find where or how to donate at 
Mantistb.org.

If the idea is a good one (vote with your money for the features you 
want), then, as Thomas Vecchione said, the issue is visibility. The 
feature-donations webpage _link_ ought to be visible prominently on the 
home page of Ardour.org, with perhaps a little text to encourage viewers 
to click the link, and the page itself should have a layout that makes 
its function almost immediately obvious just from its graphical content 
and layout, not buried somewhere in an off-site bug-tracking website. ;-)

This way, Ardour users and supporters who haven't yet learned about The 
Mantis donation feature and are probably unlikely to ever find it can 
participate and donate merely by clicking a button on a well-laid-out 
webpage that is only an obvious click away from Adour.org's home page.

Then the idea, which I had never heard of in relation to Ardour until 
learning about the "Mantis donation" feature today, may work better. :-)

Just a suggestion--

Steve