- There would need to be a defined timeline, milestones, and release date
- That release cannot be too far in the future (no one will fund an 18 month project any more)
- If those dates are missed, penalties will be applied
- There will be some of branding/marketing/PR agreement (turning the payment of development into a marketing tool)
- There will be all sorts of legal waivers the devs will have to sign (indemnifications, perpetual licenses, etc)
From previous OSS experience, the "baggage" that comes with a large payment is usually undesirable to dev groups. Which leave collecting a lot of little payments from many places. Anyone that has worked for some time fund raising for an organization will know how much of a logistical mess that is. Not to mention people that commit to pay, then back out.
One good way to get funding for a project like this is to target the government or non-industry related corporate entities. Both cases you target groups that don't compete in your market space (or rely on your competitors), but would benefit from the outcome of the project.
An example would be Dell. Dell would not see FS as competition in any way, but if the case was made that adding feature X would increase sales of Dell computers in the telcom space, or that Company X would buy Dells to run FS if this features existed, then Dell could look at investing in the project as a marketing expense.
There are down sides with this method. Devs need to walk a fine line with the corporation, ensuring that their product does not conflict with some corporate initiative or large client. Many times you will be partnering with VARS or SIs to present the proposal, as there has to be a project to justify the work. Also, expect a long sales cycle (5+ months). And, some purists would argue that the app is not FOSS once your get some large corp to fund all/part of it. Other are just content with getting the job done.
I offer my help in this area if the devs are interested in exploring this style of fund raising.
-pete
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] FreeSWITCH HA + Loadbalancing
From: Raimund Sacherer <r...@runsolutions.com>
Date: Mon, August 31, 2009 12:04 am
To: freeswitch-users@lists.freeswitch.org
Shouldn't be so hard, right? But there's human nature, even if the
corporations get to save, like, 100k worth of licenses and hardware
and other costs it is very hard to get them to spend a little back to
the community which helped to achive that goal.
I think my first, very ambitous goal to make the sofia rewrite a
personal long-term hobby is not going to be very realistic, because of
my daytime job and my private life.
But I will try to persuade my employer to make at least a little
contribution, as I really want this in FS, maybe we should
* make it a bounty project
* try to bring in some big sponsors (who are the biggest companys
using FS anyway?)
* make some awareness in the voip scene??
seriously what else can be done to get the estimated 100k to become
reality?
I really want this feature in FS! :-)
best,
--
Raimund Sacherer
-
RunSolutions
Open Source It Consulting
-
Parc Bit - Centro Empresarial Son Espanyol
Edificio Estel - Local 3D
07121 - Palma de Mallorca
Baleares
On Aug 31, 2009, at 7:57 AM, Jason White wrote:
> Ken Rice <kr...@freeswitch.org> wrote:
>
>> I know there has already been some discussion on several fronts of
>> atleast
>> getting the core and several other pieces to where they need to be
>> for
>> stateful failover and I'm not sure if its been mentioned here, but
>> sofia is
>> going to be a bit of work and estimates run in the 100K USD range.
>> Now if we
>> could get a get a couple of corporate sponsors to help here it
>> would be
>> great.
>
> I agree. Perhaps some of those corporations which are saving money
> over
> proprietary solutions by using FreeSWITCH, and who also want the
> high-availability functionality, would be ideal sponsors for the work.
>
>
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