On 07/29/2014 05:23 AM, Vesa wrote:
> 1. Kickstarter campaign for a hired developer? Do a kickstarter to
> raise some funds, then use the money to hire a developer to help with
> the migration to a new core. Do we have enough of a userbase that this
> could be feasible?

Regardless of the size of the userbase, the thing about Kickstarter is that
the two kinds of software projects that normally get funded are (a) games
or (b) "fun" apps. The only example of the latter I can think of was a
graphics-heavy Android homescreen that got funded last year and as far as I
know, has never come to fruition anyway.

This is definitely more of an infrastructure thing, and I don't think we
can present it as sexy enough to get people to pledge money to achieve it.
There's no financial downside as far as I know, but there's a pretty big
goodwill downside to having a failed Kickstarter on your record. Just ask
Canonical.

I've gotta run and I see Tres and a few others have responded since I
started writing this, but I don't even know what kind of rewards would be
tantalizing enough to make an infrastructure project sexy.

Maybe there have been successful infrastructure projects on Kickstarter,
but I don't know of any. If someone can come up with an example, maybe it
could actually work.

> 4. Google Summer of Code? This might be an option for next year, we 
> might want to start looking into this if it's something we want to do.

This does seem like exactly the sort of thing the GSoC would be good for,
but I wonder if you'd need to throw an Android or ChromeOS angle in there
to get Google to fund it nowadays. Don't be evil unless the stockholders
ask really nicely, and all.

Come to think of it, having an Android port of LMMS could be worth a
Kickstarter in and of itself -- an exhaustively complete, free and open
source music compositional tool on Android that's more than a bad port of a
'90s tracker? I'd even pledge that. It could be a stealthy way of getting
"LMMS-ng" funded, whether it ends up using Unison or something from
scratch.

I'd also eagerly pledge for an open-source web-based evolution of
LMMS (completely decoupling the engine from the UI). But LMMS on the
desktop already fits my meager needs in its current state, weird Zyn
integration and flaky Jack support and all. I've never been one to do
real-time effects in computer music; it just seems unnecessary when you can
render at top quality on fairly low-end hardware without having to set up a
whole pipeline by hand every time, play it back and hope to avoid xruns. I
realize some people are probably using LMMS as a performance tool, but for
me it's purely composition and arrangement; even mixing down is something I
do in Audacity.

I just realized it's been 10 years since I've written Qt code and 5 years
since I completed my last serious LMMS project, so my opinion doesn't and
shouldn't count for much. But I've pledged Kickstarter projects (mostly
game- and hardware-related) and I've been watching GSoC with interest for
years.

Rob

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