Cillian de Roiste wrote:
On 6/13/08, Christian Thaeter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Some Months ago when someone offered to donate some RAM, I answered that
I have sufficient hardware for myself. Now it it struck me and my laptop
got broken a few weeks ago, this is quite depressing for me since I
relied on working on the laptop alot and have problems to finance a new
one soon.
I'm really sorry to hear about your laptop and hope we can all pitch
in and get you back in action as soon as possible. One of the
documentation team on another project I'm involved with had their
laptop stolen last year and we were able to get him a new one very
quickly. Someone set up a pledge on http://www.pledgebank.com and it
seemed to work out well. Admittedly, it was a very large project with
many people making a living out of the software so the situation was a
bit different but I can see a lot of people have an interest in
furthering the development of Lumiera so I am optomistic.
Personally speaking, I feel that the amount of help and support you
have given to people on #cinelerra alone would justify the request,
but the fact that you are working hard on Lumiera means that the
sooner we can get you a very nice laptop to work with the better it
will be for all of us!
Thanks!
It has often been discussed that there must be ways to get a source of
financial support for Lumiera and other free software required for
making movies. For example: registering as a charity to accept
donations, or to form a business with shareholders, or to see if there
is an umbrella organisation that could take care of the paperwork and
tax etc. and make it easy for people to contribute in this way.
I am still at a loss for a solution but perhaps others have experience
in this area, or would be willing to try something out. Other things
that have been discussed in the past are the possibilities of getting
movie makers to use some of their funding to support the project since
they may have more access to funding (although, I do understand no-one
ever has money to spare on a movie budget).
I see some problems here, setting up an charity costs some burecary
overhead and even worse, it sucks a lot of time. Having some
organization to do that might be ok but would make Lumiera also more
attackable by patent claims in certain countries (luckily not here). It
should be carefully considered if we really want to go this way.
Anyways, I asked the FSFE guys last year at the FrOSCon if the the FSFE
could do such kind of 'umbrella service'. Unfortunally (but
understandable) there is no much interest for doing so.
1. Would it be viable when developers (or otherwise involved people)
just speak up when they have some struggle to get some hardware (or
even more essential needs!) financed?
It would be great if we had some funds that you could just draw from
in a situation like this, but this is tricky and there's always the
risk of getting involved in political discussions etc. I hope the
other developers, documentation writers and supporters for
Cinelerra/Lumiera would also feel welcome to ask for support where
necessary and won't feel left out of this. Maybe we should try to do
some generic fund raising and share it out amongst the people who need
it? Hopefully we can help get you a laptop really soon though.
Indeed, this has to be open to anyone who works the project, everything
else would be really unfair. While collecting and manage some funds has
some issues (we are not an organization), and even if we would be
covered by an organization it is hard to make this transparent enough
that anyone can easily see where the money goes and who decides on it. I
would have some bad feeling about that. But setting up an website where
potential donors can add non-obligatory general promises in advance
might work, see below.
2. Is there anyone out there who would give donations?
It would be a pleasure. How would you like to accept donations?
Well, first I wanted to ask around and checking the responses.
I could imagine to set up an website where donors can make
non-obligatory 'promises' about an amount of money the would offer on a
per-project or general base. When it is forseeable that a goal becomes
realizeable the donors are contacted to acknowlege their offering, when
then enough people acknowledged it, then the thing gets done, means
people can send money in 'acceptable' ways (For me that would be bank
transfer, or maybe I could activate a paypal account, I also need to
checkout this pledgebank.com). When a donation is recieved it is tagged
as that on the website, so everyone can transparently see how it works
and how much money got donated. Maybe it turns out this way that some
'Projects' are not realizeable because there are not enough offerings to
reach the Goal, such projects might then stay uncompleted or withdrawn.
Does this sound ok?
And of course I would be proud if such a system works for others too and
me and my laptop won't be the only thing there. Finally it is always
cool when free software manages to feed some developers, Lumiera is
still far from that, but maybe some day this becomes true.
Christian
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