Le mercredi, septembre 23, 2020 11:26 AM, <j...@ohyran.se> a écrit :
> > Yes, messaging -- for Blender it's easy because there are many companies > > > funding them for whom blender is a complement that replaces expensive > > alternatives. It's different for KDE, so that needs good thinking. > > Also... Just like Blender, KDE probably needs to setup a second legal entity > > that can fund freelance developers for certain projects or even outright > > hire them. > > This part is the tricky one to me. Where is the benefit for companies to > sponsor KDE? I mean we have a group of different organizations that use Plasma > for example - but how can we leverage that in to donations? For large companies, we provide two products that can encourage them to invest some money in: * End-user applications that are used in a professional context (Kdenlive, Krita, KDevelop, ...). For Blender, they receive considerable donations because they provided a cheaper alternative to Maya and other big 3D creative suites. For KDE, this is more difficult because 2d creation suites or IDEs are less expensive than Maya for example. Still, I think we will always find companies who are interested in replacing their €300/year/user system with a cheaper system and willing to invest in the long term viability of the open-source system. * The frameworks: Companies are investing €5000/year/developer for Qt and for other libraries because it is more cost-efficient than reinventing the wheel and maintaining their own custom libraries. This is an additional entry point for corporate donations if we are able to convince them that using and supporting financially the KDE frameworks is a good long term choice. I actually worked on trying to improve the image of the frameworks with https://develop.kde.org/. This still needs work on adding more content. But I think the real strength of KDE is the huge amount of users around the world and using KDE's software in various ways. Unlike Blender which targets essentially 3D artists, KDE targets everyone with education software, graphic software, developer tools, but most importantly Plasma and various KDE applications making it able to use your computer with only open-source and privacy-respecting software. I think many people would pay a bit, if we would improve our communication around how the donation help making our software even better and this will make their life easier. This are just a few ideas and probably there are more possibilities to explore. > > What would we or those developers sponsored be able to deliver to those > organisations that would justify their cost? > > The one thing I think could be done is contacting those organisations and > simply dig through their usage, needs and wants and see what we are missing. > > That said, when we start doing this we will be tying ourselves to this model > for a while which can have drawbacks too.
