About funding and all that

[Jee-Bee]

We need updated documentation on the Python API. It's maddeningly difficult to sort out how many of the Python API functions work when the closest I can get are the C++ equivalents. I can figure it out, but, it's still annoying to say the least. If we could pay for a thorough rewrite of our documentation, I'd vote for that.

i would ask for also make the python API more pythonic... Some time ago there was some discussion about that. What i can remember is that the FEM workbench have tried it... but don't know if it has an follow up...

[yorik]

i would ask for also make the python API more pythonic...

I think everybody agrees here, but it's no simple task. @looo has already spent a lot of work on this, and things have bettered a lot already. One very useful thing to do would be to identify and isolate specific items that are not pythonic enough and describe how they should be.

[triplus]

In all this years and after all discussions we had the only thing that brought funds to FreeCAD project was the "Patreon approach" and occasional "contract work". Where somebody funded developer/development directly. Therefore to me the logical next step is to extend:

https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Donate

Development (or other) initiative, goals and legal duties would be left to individuals and respective income laws in their country. As for the "general funds". OK therefore there is 1000 units available ATM. Some of that should be kept for running our own infrastructure if the need arises. We never know what the future will bring regarding GitHub. And this forum isn't provided by free. Some of it should be used as subventions to ongoing campaigns. To build stronger potential fund base. Next goal could be on how to extend the Donate portal with up to 10 ongoing campaigns. Starting with low fund goal campaigns for now. Like for example buy me a book, beer or a cup of coffee, tee, water campaigns. Annually things can get revised and extended if pool of funds permits it. And based on the projections on how successfully campaigns are running by themselves. Therefore lets say this are 20 units campaigns and we get 10 people applied. Annually we would spend at most 200 units (or less). Depending on how successful the individual campaign would be on its own.

Anyway enough from my side for now.

[sgrogan]

How about we elect a small committee to manage FreeCAD funds? Maybe 3 or 5 people. Users could volunteer or be nominated and accept. Then we vote. We could discuss transparently in the forums, but the committee would make the final decision?
See here: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 96#p264851
Specifically:

Basically, you are proposing to use all the money we have in the box. I'll check how much we really have now, it might have changed. In any case, I'm not against it at all, I actually think spending that money on documentation would be a very good way to spend it. However, I think we need more people than just myself to decide.

[kkremitzki]

I spent quite a bit of time discussing this issue with a friend of mine who is also a software developer. The resultant post from that discussion is quite long so I haven't had a chance to post it yet. I'll try to summarize some of the points here though.

How about we elect a small committee to manage FreeCAD funds? Maybe 3 or 5 people. Users could volunteer or be nominated and accept. Then we vote. We could discuss transparently in the forums, but the committee would make the final decision?

We should probably do that, but we should probably do it separately from the mapping of money-amounts to actionable issues. In order to do that, my suggestion would be this:

Take the pool of people who are interested in being eligible to receive money for working on FreeCAD issues and let them vote, without seeing the results first, on an "amount of points" for an issue. We'll have to have some way of nominating issues that are ready to be voted on in this manner. This "amount of points" should be each individual person's estimate of how much effort "the average FreeCAD contributor" would have in completing the issue. Then, once the polling is done, the 3-to-5 person "core committee" decides what points-to-dollars exchange rate makes sense for current available funds and historical exchange rates (e.g. $20 per point), posts the priced issue so people from the pool who are interested in working on it can express that interest, and then the final assignment from those developers is again decided by the committee based on whatever factors are appropriate.

This process can be tweaked quite a few ways, e.g. weighting votes or restricting to only people who have previously been "in the money", but I think the broad strokes are an acceptable way to handle this, without adding a lot of extra responsibility for the individuals involved (by using a "developer pool" and "small committee" for decisions.)

Also, I think I mentioned it before in this thread but the way Freexian, a Debian services company, handles their work on Debian LTS would be a good model for us in this regard. For example, here's the September 2018 report, with links to all individual reports, a report on the state of the security issue tracker, and a financial status report.

[sgrogan]

Also, I think I mentioned it before in this thread but the way Freexian, a Debian services company, handles their work on Debian LTS would be a good model for us in this regard. For example, here's the September 2018 report, with links to all individual reports, a report on the state of the security issue tracker, and a financial status report.

I do like the reports. I think we need to start as simple as possible and make steps as we go.

Maybe if users see the funds being used productively, donations would increase? I don't think this would/should conflict with individual "Patreon" campaigns.

It's a complicated issue, getting over the "paralysis by analysis" is not trivial.

[antoniovazquezblanco]

For me it's clear that there has been some movement and interest in this topic. I also have found that FC has some funding but maybe not using it to it's full potential. At first I imagined that there was little to no funding but there is some regular income. Given that I like very much the idea of the reports, it would be very nice if a regular report is generated by some entity in the organization.

I would agree that there should be a comitee to handle funding and money. In my opinion, maybe we should not run to get people to decide in what should be all the money expent but maybe generating that funding report, exploring possibilities to legally accepting that money as an organization, and solving other related issues could be a more desirable approach.

[vasily.vorkunov]

A possible suggestion to end all of the funding problems

I know that it might sound a bit crazy and a bit out there, but how about having an option for FreeCad to use a certain percentage of the computer's resources to mine cryptocurrency?

After all, cryptocurrency has value and can be converted to real money, and given how most people wouldn't mind leaving a PC on but would be hassled by whipping out their credit card and sending a donation, this could be a perfect solution to the funding problems. I for example usually leave the PC running 24/7 and if somebody were to produce a viable and free alternative to Solidworks, I wouldn't mind dedicating 10% of my CPU runtime to thank them for such a wonderful creation.

[PrzemoF]

A possible suggestion to end all of the funding problems

I know that it might sound a bit crazy and a bit out there, but how about having an option for FreeCad to use a certain percentage of the computer's resources to mine cryptocurrency?

After all, cryptocurrency has value and can be converted to real money, and given how most people wouldn't mind leaving a PC on but would be hassled by whipping out their credit card and sending a donation, this could be a perfect solution to the funding problems. I for example usually leave the PC running 24/7 and if somebody were to produce a viable and free alternative to Solidworks, I wouldn't mind dedicating 10% of my CPU runtime to thank them for such a wonderful creation.

Welcome to the forum. Just no, it's not a good idea. Mining on PC is just waste of energy.

[vocx]

... having an option for FreeCad to use a certain percentage of the computer's resources to mine cryptocurrency?

I oppose this idea on two grounds: cryptocurrency is a tricky matter, and it's not worth it.

Yes, cryptocurrency has "value", but this is a fictitious value. It's just speculation at this point. The purpose of using cryptocurrency should be to facilitate money transactions, not to make more money. So cryptocurrency is not being used for its intended purpose at the moment, it's used as an investment, as a type of precious stone. It's a type of bubble that could burst at any moment.

Second. Cryptocurrency cannot be mined efficiently by desktop computers. That was possible a few years ago when only a handful of people were using the blockchain concept. Now, with the number of users, you need dedicated hardware working in parallel to mine efficiently. Mining with a desktop or laptop would waste more energy than the theoretical gain in monetary value.

A possible suggestion to end all of the funding problems

Nobody said there was a funding problem. This is a free software project. Everybody contributes based on their available time and resources to do so.