About funding and all that

[yorik]

thanks for that text, that basically goes in the same direction as what I thought: "not yet"

[DanielC]

Hello,

I would like to donate to FreeCAD on a regular basis through Paetreon.

https://www.patreon.com/

I see that triplus already suggested the idea but it got no replies. Anyway, Patereon is easy. I don't need a foundation, I don't need a tax receipt. I just want to send $5/month to Jürgen as a thank-you for the continued work on FreeCAD. I use Patreon to support several other creators that I want to promote and I just want to add FreeCAD to the list.

Becoming a Paetreon creator is ridiculously easy. It has to be; it's designed for individual creators like musicians. I swear you can get the thing set up in 10 minutes and I will be honored to become the first patron. Patreon gives you a choice to get donations for individual events (e.g. per song) or to get a monthly donation. For FreeCAD, the monthly donation clearly makes the most sense. This isn't a bounty; this is a small revenue stream to help keep FreeCAD moving forward.

What do you say? When I can I send you my first $5?

[yorik]

Jürgen, I hope you are following this thread

[DanielC]

A little more about Patreon:

In Patreon, creators are supposed to setup "Goals" for the total amount pledged, and "Rewards" for patrons that contribute certain amounts of money. Don't be intimidated by that. It's very simple. For example:

Goals:

- $X/month to pay for the server cost.
- $Y/month to send Jürgen to FOSDEM every year.

Rewards:

- $1/month: The eternal gratitude of the FreeCAD developers.
- $5/month: Your name on the FreeCAD website (add a "Thank You" page).
- $10/month: You get a "Certificate of Awesomeness" from the FreeCAD team.
- $25/month: Your name added to the FreeCAD software (add menu item: Help > Sponsors).

Maybe add a bi-monthly Hangouts chat between the developers and the Awesome patrons ($10/m) to talk about future plans for FreeCAD, or whatever. It's an easy perk, and a good way to interact with your most dedicated users. Also makes the $10 perk a bit more tangible.

Just an idea.

[kkremitzki]

Another microdonation service worth mentioning that I have seen in use for other large software projects (e.g. https://taskwarrior.org/) is Flattr: https://flattr.com/about

[Giulio Buccini]

I like very much the Patreon mechanism proposed by DanielC.

At the moment I'm supporting one "creator" on Patreon with just 1$ per month. It's nothing for me but it's important for the creator.
On Patreon a creator can set as many goals as he/she want and doesn't need to be a foundation, association, etc.

[yorik]

Ok, in the meantime, I already started a patreon page for myself https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre

[triplus]

I was just thinking about this today a bit and based on the past discussions forming FreeCAD foundation isn't planned anytime soon. Therefore exploring founding options will need to happen on more individual level.

Good luck and hopefully someday you will reach the goal of being able to work on FreeCAD full time and i guess in your free time to work on FreeCAD.

[HoWil]

I saw that there is a FC-team on bountysource.com https://www.bountysource.com/teams/freecad.
I like the idea of bountysource more than patreon because user can steer the direction in which the development should go/is needed and can pay for features/tasks/bounties.
Who is managing this team/account?

See also this comparison for crowd funding services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... g_services.

[agryson]

+1 for Patreon.
I already support several creators there https://www.patreon.com/agryson and it works very well, providing lots of simplicity and flexibility.

I would strongly suggest a main Patreon for the whole project (Yorik, your patreon seems to focus on the Arch workbench).

As a second step down the line, there's nothing to stop a workbench by workbench patreon (that way people could direct funding where it helps them best).