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

[Thomas Vecchione]

I strongly disagree with both John and Patrick's observations on the
situation with the 'average' user.

Just because the majority of users are not participating inthis thread is
not an idicator that they want something one way or the other.  If anything
it is an indicator of that they(People donating, which is far more than the
2 or 3 John mentions) are happy to donate money themselves.

It isn't that people want a broken system to continue, heck I wouldn't be
surprised to learn that the majority of donating users aren't even on this
list to begin with.

So all that being said, lets take this to the next level this conversation
needs to go.  We have several options that were brought up.  Few ofthese
options are mutually exclusive of any other option.  John Covers some of
these

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 6:07 AM, John Emmas <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> 1)  Accept the situation and plough on regardless (i.e. hope that your
>    project wlll "grow out of" the problem and achieve critical mass).


IT is an option, but I think everyone agrees that it won't be sustaininable
for a while, and looking at other options is not a bad idea.


> 2)  Use whatever donations exist to promote market awareness of the
>    project in the hope that critical mass will follow.


Also an option, but I do not think that it is a good one in this particular
case.  I think solving funding problems before marketing is a good choice,
as marketing won't necessarily, in this case, increase funding like it might
from closed source proprietary apps.

3)  Find a sponsor (or sponsors) with deep enough pockets to reduce
>    the reliance on small, personal donations.


This is going to be what I think will be the most viable for the moment, but
I will come back to it.


> 4)  Arrange the project so that at least some element of it is only
>    available after payment of a fee.


To break this down a bit more, this involves things like more visible NAG
dialogs, tickers, browsers, etc. as has been discussed by this thread to
fund development.  In general I am personally against these, but I won't
rehash that topic here.


> 5)  Charge for some kind of ancillary service, such as technical support
>    (IMHO, only viable where the project has corporate clients).
>

And this option I do not believe is viable(And I get the feeling John
doesn't either) in this context.

My personal opinion is that following up on finding more sponsors is going
to be the most viable option.  By sponsors though I don't mean just
corporate sponsors.  As has been brought up individual sponsors are a
possibility, although probably not likely enough on their own to depend on.
But personally I am thinking looking at grants is probably going to be the
best possibility.  For instance looking at the National Endowment for the
Arts(US based) it seems like we MIGHT qualify to apply for something under
Arts Education due to the access we provide to students and others, or Media
Arts.  Not saying this with any sort of certainty at this point.  But there
are also certainly other organizations out there that might provide similar
opportunities.  Of course one thing it would require is someone that can
write good grant proposals as well, something I personally don't have
experience with.

Anyways this is just my 3rd and 4th cent in the thread, going to go work on
other things at the moment I think.

             Seablade
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