I think there are many other ways to get people working on Apàche FLEX than giving donations to Apache expecting money goes where it was intended to go. I mean. As I see it, collaborating at Apache is a matter of wish, people wishes to help and contributes... Well, what is the problem on founding a parallel fundation that hire the programmers and make them collaborate and contribute to Apache Flex as committers...
There are always many ways to get the same goal folks... 2015-02-26 18:44 GMT-03:00 Alex Harui <[email protected]>: > Couple of notes on this: > > The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) does not currently take “directed > donations”. That means that if you send in a check to the ASF, you can’t > dictate that it goes only to Flex, it only goes to the general fund and is > shared by all projects. There are many ongoing discussions to change > that, but even then, there are likely to be restrictions on using the > funds to pay developers. Directed funds are likely to go for servers, > events, marketing, but not development. There is a strong ASF sentiment > towards never having the ASF pay any developer directly. I’m not sure of > the reason, but it may just be that then the unpaid volunteers will start > asking to be paid to contribute. > > So, the proposed solutions are for folks to come up with their own ways to > pool money including crowd funding sites. But the model that the ASF > commonly promotes is this: Companies that want to support development of > a project should simply hire developers to work on that project. No need > to try to form a consortium or foundation and deal with tracking the money > and taxes. Just hire someone to do the work or to do your work so you can > contribute. If you have extra money to donate to the ASF, spend that > money on hiring a Flex developer, even part-time. I can guarantee you > that if Adobe stops paying me to work on Flex, I’ll be trying to stitch > together a living by working on Flex by trying to get companies to pay me > to work on Flex. > > > Live Support is a tricky topic. A couple of big companies I’ve talked to > want another big company to pick up support for Flex. Not sure who a > candidate would be, but in the ASF, live support is a community thing. > There are folks watching the mailing list essentially 24/7 already. But > that’s not good enough for these big companies. Adobe has only promised 5 > years of support for Flex. Not sure when the deadline is up, or if Adobe > will immediately stop at the 5 year point, but as we near the 5 year > point, it will be interesting to see which big companies still want Flex > support and if we can convince some other big company to pick up the ball > if Adobe no longer wants it. > > -Alex > > On 2/25/15, 11:46 PM, "Carlos Velasco" <[email protected]> > wrote: > > >The last threads about whether it would be good or not to create a virtual > >machine which moves FLEX from using the Adobe Flash Player or not, have > >made me spent many time thinking about the whole thing. > > > >I think there are four points where the product need hard investment: > > > >1. The said virtual machine. > >2. A good, maintained and free (without cost) IDE for developers to work > >with FLEX. > >3. FLEX evangelism and live support. > >4. A bigger FLEX SDK full time commiters base. > > > >The thing is... those projects are heavy enough to fail if they are to be > >developed in a pure community driven context, as they would require full > >time dedicated people to get them live and working (in parallel to > >community free efforts). > > > >On the other hand, moving to a company to handle them delivers the > >community to the same situation that is suffering right now with Adobe > >placed at the base of the technology development. > > > >In fact, most people here work or owns companies which make profit or at > >least made profit by creating FLEX solutions, and I think we all here > >believe that it shoud be that way for the next years to come. > > > >The idea is: > > > >We could create an "I support FLEX" manifest that those companies and > >developers would sign to voluntarily commit to making regular donations to > >a foundation created to support and make real and maintaining alive those > >projects. > > > >The foundation goals would be: hiring programmers, analysts, product > >managers and so to maintain the 3 projects, which obviously will remain > >being open source Apache projects and mainly community driven. The scope > >here is not to become owners of the technology, but ensure that there is > >full time people working everyday on getting FLEX fit, hitting and > >running. > > > >Here in Paraguay we have very good portfolio of developers and a very low > >development hour costs rate, so it would be the right place to create such > >a foundation. > > > >Of course where comes and goes such received money, what the people is > >working on, is to be mandatory transparent as the foundation could only go > >on and work if the contributors are happy investing on it. > > > >Do you find interesting such an idea? Do you people think it would collect > >enough money to get those 4 development teams running and improving the > >technology? > > > >As I see it, it would be as if every company or developer working with > >flex > >and selling flex based solutions shared a flex development team which by > >the way would work for and only for them that are paying it. > > > >Should we work in developing the idea? > >
