About funding and all that

[Zolko]

If there is a chance that FC gets 'officially' funded, I'd love to become a full time developer for it.

and I'd love to find a way for you to be funded for that. You and others, of course.

The main problem with that, I'd guess, is that governments are not so likely to cut a check to individual contributors, but if there was a more formal type of organization to receive it, they'd be more likely.

Like kkremitzki mentioned, big guys don't like to deal with individuals.

And rightly so, it's not the government's business to fund individuals for their pet projects. That's why I think that FreeCAD should aim towards some legally organised organisation, and not only a bunch of sympathic geek hobbyists.

[Cyril]

I don't remember which thread it was but I think it was Bernd from the FEM workbench who said that the CalculiX author (finite element analysis software) has funding and all sorts of support because he applied to some European research projects. It sounds to me that Europeans have way too much money and don't know how to spend it. So, if anybody knows, please sponsor realthunder and me to go to Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, to get some of those sweet Euro dollars.

Don't confuse having too much money and being smart… MOOC workbench was also financed to be used in a great MOOC titled "3D modeling with FreeCAD" (Modéliser en 3D avec FreeCAD) by french universities EESAB and IMT Atlantique, FreeCAD community which helped, European union fund FEDER, Rennes city, Bretagne region and a private fund I don't want to talk about.

Side note : Switzerland don't use € but swiss francs.

@realthunder : look for universities laboratories which works on project close to what you develop. It could be as well design, automation, architecture… Don't look at the title but at what they do. Rather than financing you directly they would hire you to work on something (course development, research project etc…) in which you will be able to use, develop and improve your tools. They use generally very permissive license (eg. MIT).
Rest in pm.

[saso]

Whenever you make your points, you make them in such a way that it seems you have the "right" solution.

I do sometimes wonder how it would be if for just one month I could sit down and work with a good developer...

How can you say this, when it's obvious that FreeCAD has ever more features than before?
...
We need a critical mass of interested individuals to improve the situation, otherwise what is the point of organizing a group of 10 to 15 people?

Well I obviously prefer quality over quantity, since IMO probably just a handful of the right people would be enough

[bernd]

@saso:
even propriatary ones do implement new features and fix lots of bugs afterwards. It is just not an open process and you normally do not have access to beta versions.

[chrisb]

you normally do not have access to beta versions.

That's often wrong. The difference is, they call it stable what we call a development version. Which company affords hundreds of testers over several months?

[Mark Szlazak]

How about this project?

phpBB [video]

See if they might fund you for FreeCAD work.

[triplus]

In my opinion FreeCAD is eligible to apply for an Epic MegaGrant.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants

[kkremitzki]

Agreed, it's surprising considering it's a game store but per their page we are in the scope of what they're giving grants for.

I also found something similar, Mozilla Open Source Support Awards: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/moss/ and Open Collective, which would be similar to our group Liberapay account: https://opencollective.com/

[adrianinsaval]

Might be relevant: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 7&p=367894
is there anyone in charge of applying to this kind of stuff?

[saso]

For me the bigger question is what we would do with the money? Lets say we get 100.000,00 EUR