About funding and all that

[freedman]

I don't think that would be my choice for funding.

I should clarify that I'm not talking about plane trips & hotel stays but for example registration for events and regional travel.

Don't get me wrong here. I was trying to make a point that everybody is going to have a choice where they want funds to go. I would like my bucks to go towards programmers and fixing problems. I'm sure there is internal knowledge amongst the group where meetings and events should be funded also, changing modules and coding is a very complicated dynamic thing, people need to meet and hash out the details. kkremitzki, I see you doing stuff here all the time, thank you.

[antoniovazquezblanco]

Most common is paying for developers to go to conferences where they can present on FreeCAD

I don't think that would be my choice for funding.

How about with 300K, people get to vote (in some way) where the money goes. Each vote is worth 5 bucks. Some people get mutiple vote powers, could be linked to the number of forum posts. Every 100 posts gives you 1 vote. So kkremitzki with 968 posts would have 9 votes to assign per month. Give the power to vote to 50 active users and they need to be active. Full disclosure of what goes where each month, users would vote on projects to do. Maybe just do it as a trial for a few months to see how it would work.

Just a spit ball.

What you propose is a good way to find what people willing to finance the project want but it may exclude many people from participating. I think that FC should publish periodic polls about what features are more desired and to get feedback from the overall experience. That should help steer funding towards particular objectives in my opinion.

About giving something back to the people that really want to donate to the project, I think that is clearly very important. I think that donations should be rewarded to be encouraged. The best way for me is to link my donation to a particular bounty so that if someone solves that particular problem then I will get that feature (that gives me a lot of control over the funding I provide without leaving other people participation in polls out of the way due to the fact that they can't contribute that much). Having merchandising available is my least preferred way of funding but other people may like it. Being able to get a tax refund from my donation is also important for me.

[kkremitzki]

I don't think that would be my choice for funding.

I should clarify that I'm not talking about plane trips & hotel stays but for example registration for events and regional travel.

Don't get wrong here. I was trying to make a point that everybody is going to have a choice where they want funds to go. I would like my bucks to go towards programmers and fixing problems. I'm sure there is internal knowledge amongst the group where meetings and events should be funded also, changing modules and coding is a very complicated dynamic thing, people need to meet and hash out the details. kkremitzki, I see you doing stuff here all the time, thank you.

Thanks for the support! I totally understand with regards to choice of direction of funds--it's a fundamental topic that needs to be discussed. Mainly I just wanted to add on to my comment since I fired it off while on the way out the door and didn't flesh it out as much as I could.

The one big downside to paying programmers for feature work is that there can be a lot of overhead in terms of project management, but if that work can be spread amongst the community (which it mostly should as a result of an open democratic process) I could see it being very effective.

[kkremitzki]

Being able to get a tax refund from my donation is also important for me.

If we become a Software Freedom Conservancy project, we can receive donations which are tax-deductible, and I think your feeling is probably common. If we make it easy for businesses and individuals who use FreeCAD to donate and to even get a tax deduction, I am pretty sure the amount of donations we'd get would be far from zero.

[freedman]

Look at what just happened here with myself and kkremitzki, he writes something quickly and I write something based on my current thought pattern and don't think twice, later I read it and I sound like a jerk. He felt like he had to explain what he said and why. Oh man! Can you imagine doing this and now involve money. There is No way funding can be discussed per project on a forum, the site will explode and so will all the users. It will be a surgery to the forum, my guess is something like a Frankenstein. Imagine 100 different people donating money and because of the donations they expect something in return and defend it on the forum, well they might not get what they want, the changes they expect might not get completed or more donations could drive a programmer in another direction.

[antoniovazquezblanco]

Look at what just happened here with myself and kkremitzki, he writes something quickly and I write something based on my current thought pattern and don't think twice, later I read it and I sound like a jerk. He felt like he had to explain what he said and why. Oh man! Can you imagine doing this and now involve money. There is No way funding can be discussed per project on a forum, the site will explode and so will all the users. It will be a surgery to the forum, my guess is something like a Frankenstein. Imagine 100 different people donating money and because of the donations they expect something in return and defend it on the forum, well they might not get what they want, the changes they expect might not get completed or more donations could drive a programmer in another direction.

I understand what you mean and I also believe a forum is not the right tool to manage a project like this. It can be a form of input for the fund managers but one must be aware that the final decision will be taken by the organization you donate to.

[dcapeletti]

For its flexibility, FreeCAD will be a great project at some point. The account at Bountysource is apparently down. I considered donating money mostly to BIM and to the Assembly part.

[kkremitzki]

I've sent the email to the Software Freedom Conservancy.

[freedman]

Maybe it's not my business, maybe it is. What will Software Freedom Conservancy do for FreeCAD. It looks like they have just a couple employees making 100K a year and they offer "direction" and legal advise. I presume some of our donations could go to them and attached is their finanical report expense page for 2015 from their site..

They made 1.9 mil in 2015,
$259K paid saleries for 2-1/2 people, the whole company.
$256K in travel
$133k for conferences
$261K for internships
$5000 for mentoring student devopers. Not much interest there.

Total expenses for that year, 1.1 mil and they made 1.9 mil, 900k in the bank.

What will FreeCAD get from this it doesn't already have.
Thanks

[kkremitzki]

What will FreeCAD get from this it doesn't already have.

The main two things are: (1) it makes the FreeCAD project a legal entity which can receive and hold money and assets, and (2) the potential for legal protection in case one of the CAD incumbents takes a dislike to us and sics their lawyers on the project or people in it.

Like you said, there is a cost: they take 10% of donations for FreeCAD through them. It will still be possible to donate to individuals contributing to FreeCAD as it is now.