As a WINE user, I find myself in a (seemingly) unique situation. I'll do my best to explain my motivations, and what resources are at my disposal. Basically, I would like to give money to the WINE project.
I'm a home linux user, and a techops RHEL admin at work. I have no need for windows, MS Office, or other high priority applications. I do play Guild Wars and Eve Online and have been fairly active on AppDB and bugzilla. I have no desire to write and contribute code to the project, as I would like to spend my home time playing Games and avoiding development work. Untill just recently, I was a Transgaming subscriber. I canceled my account the day that the 32-bit cursor patch went into WINE git. I would like to take the money that I had reserved for transgaming and donate it to the WINE project. Herein lies the dilemma.
Looking at the contributions page, I am confronted by the following:
Wine Party Fund: The purpose of the Wine Party Fund is to show appreciation to Wine developers by collecting funds for developer meetings, such as future Wine Conferences, or in some cases to purchase documentation.
That's fine and all, but I am looking for a way to contribute to the actual development (and only development). If I wanted to buy someone beer, it would be an attractive woman (If Alexandre is a unisex/woman's name, I sincerely appologize). Having been to a number of conferences, they don't stirke me as being of much value. I want to pay for a developer, or rather his/her development time. This brings me to Codeweavers and Transgaming. As far as I can tell, TG deosn't really give a whole heck of a lot back to the WINE project. Purchasing a TG subscription really is not in anyone's best interests. However, Codeweavers appears to do a whole lot. The only problem is that I have no interest in their product, and purchasing it only funds WINE development indirectly/partially. I also don't like their pricing model, since they require up-front payment for a product I won't ever use. I would love to see WINE adopt a payment system like TG. This way I can donate $5 per month, have it go "directly" to WINE development efforts (not beer, parties, conferences, etc), and have it pulled directly from an account that I hold (since I do not use Paypal for numerous reasons). Is this an unreasonable request? Should I just "eat-it" and purchase a personal copy of CXO? I guess I could give it as a gift to a friend or something... I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter.
Thank you for your time, Frank Russo
Am Freitag 06 April 2007 14:38 schrieb Frank Russo:
Beeing a Codeweavers employee myself my view on this matter is obviously biased. Just a disclaimer, that no one argues I'm hiding my own interests.
Wine Party Fund: The purpose of the Wine Party Fund is to show appreciation to Wine developers by collecting funds for developer meetings, such as future Wine Conferences, or in some cases to purchase documentation.
That's fine and all, but I am looking for a way to contribute to the actual development (and only development). If I wanted to buy someone beer, it would be an attractive woman (If Alexandre is a unisex/woman's name, I sincerely appologize). Having been to a number of conferences, they don't stirke me as being of much value. I want to pay for a developer, or rather his/her development time> .
WineConf mainly serves to build up personal relationships between developers, to turn E-Mail addresses and IRC Nicks into actual human beeings. While the use of that can't be measured in lines of code it should not be underevaluated. I think creates a better and more productive development environment.
--- The rest is mainly confuse talk about payment and wine development. ---
This brings me to Codeweavers and Transgaming. As far as I can tell, TG deosn't really give a whole heck of a lot back to the WINE project. Purchasing a TG subscription really is not in anyone's best interests. However, Codeweavers appears to do a whole lot. The only problem is that I have no interest in their product, and purchasing it only funds WINE development indirectly/partially. I also don't like their pricing model, since they require up-front payment for a product I won't ever use.
While TG's payment model has its own advantages for sure, CrossOver's upfront payment makes things much easier. We can ship CrossOver on CDs buyable in shops, less bureocracy, more freedom regarding the payment method(*). No issue if you want to terminate the subscription since there is no regular payment.
Most Wine developers are either hobbyists who want their favorite apps running(I started with Empire Earth, still doesn't run), or employed by CodeWeavers, a Linux company, or other companies. The Wine Project exists as a financial entity, but it does not employ developers. As you have noticed, the wine party fund is what it is - for funding parties.
But of course you can always pay any developer or company for doing the work you want. Regarding Games there are Henri Verbeet(d3d), Roderick Colenbrander(opengl), Fabian Bieler(d3d), Maarten Lankhorst(sound), Griswold(does the cursor stuff, don't know his real name), Chris Robinson(quatz, opengl), me(d3d), and a number of helpful users who test their games regularly and track down regressions if something breaks. Karsten Elfenbein mainly gets the credit for debugging Eve Online. All I did was to clean up his hacks and send them in for inclusion after there was a lot of demand for Eve Online support in CrossOver Mac. If someone wants to work on some games you like you can get in contact and agree on whatever you want to agree :-) . As far as I am concerned, you can buy CrossOver and vote on your games in our application database(right now eve online is the highest voted game), or pledge on a game(eve online beeing 2nd after some poker client).
Thanks for your interest in wine and your positive feedback :-) Stefan
(*) This is what leads me to working on Wine. A few years back, aged 16, I wanted to run my games on Linux. Cedega looked promising, and $15 a worthy amount of money to spend to try it, and $5 per month is not really expensive IMO. Issue is just that at least here in Austria I couldn't get a Credit card to pay for cedega. Wine development didn't have an age tag on it, so thats the way I went(though it took me 2 years to really get started).
On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 02:38:42PM +0200, Frank Russo wrote:
This way I can donate $5 per month, have it go "directly" to WINE development efforts (not beer, parties, conferences, etc), and have it pulled directly from an account that I hold (since I do not use Paypal for numerous reasons).
You can use the Paypal button without an Paypal account, you just enter your bank account or credit card information (obviously you need to be not logged in with Paypal).
Or at the bottom of http://www.winehq.org/site/contributing is an different way of payment.
I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add bank account details on that page, so people can just transfer money directly (at least in Europe, not sure how that works in the rest of the world) and also set up interval transactions.
Probably a Google Checkout option wouldn't hurt either ( 501(c)(3) tax exempt status need, which I guess we have ). (You know, because of all those Paypal horror stories, though the previous option is probably sufficient.)
Is this an unreasonable request?
No, I can really understand that. Directly funding development instead of other stuff is probably something that many people want when donating. But it's probably something that would be hard to do inside of Wine, which leads us to CW.
Should I just "eat-it" and purchase a personal copy of CXO? I guess I could give it as a gift to a friend or something... I'd love to hear your opinions on the matter.
I can't think of any other way to fund wine development in a general way. Though I would guess you probably also pay for sending CW employees to the conference. Pledges with CW are probably also a nice way.
Jan
On Fr, 2007-04-06 at 19:30 +0200, Jan Zerebecki wrote:
Or at the bottom of http://www.winehq.org/site/contributing is an different way of payment.
I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add bank account details on that page,
No! Never!
You can use any bank account to pay something online, without permission. - The account Owner must detect, that someone payed something from the account - The account Owner has the work, to get his Money back - It's easy possible, that there is no way to get the Money back (Destination Account is gone, as Example)
On 4/6/07, Frank Russo frusso@qpass.com wrote:
As a WINE user, I find myself in a (seemingly) unique situation. I'll do my best to explain my motivations, and what resources are at my disposal. Basically, I would like to give money to the WINE project.
I find myself in a similar dilemma... What if a few of us banded together and put a bounty on a feature / app, or contracted codeweavers to implement it? I think that would be great. Assuming we can agree on something we'd like to fund, it would be a little more targeted than just voting in CW's appdb.
--tim
Thank you for your comments, especially Stefan. I'll pick up a copy of crossover/linux and give it to the next person I have difficulty converting due to "must have" productivity applications.
Thanx Again, Frank Russo
-----Original Message----- From: Tim Schmidt [mailto:timschmidt@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 8:03 PM To: Frank Russo Cc: wine-devel@winehq.org Subject: Re: Contributing money to WINE?
On 4/6/07, Frank Russo frusso@qpass.com wrote:
As a WINE user, I find myself in a (seemingly) unique situation. I'll
do my best to explain my motivations, and what resources are at my disposal. Basically, I would like to give money to the WINE project.
I find myself in a similar dilemma... What if a few of us banded together and put a bounty on a feature / app, or contracted codeweavers to implement it? I think that would be great. Assuming we can agree on something we'd like to fund, it would be a little more targeted than just voting in CW's appdb.
--tim
On 4/10/07, Frank Russo frusso@qpass.com wrote:
I find myself in a similar dilemma... What if a few of us banded together and put a bounty on a feature / app, or contracted codeweavers to implement it? I think that would be great. Assuming we can agree on something we'd like to fund, it would be a little more targeted than just voting in CW's appdb.
You have the capacity to pledge for a application or game in the CW compatibility database. here is my personal favorite.
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=249;pledge=1
--tim
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Detlef Riekenberg -
Frank Russo -
Jan Zerebecki -
Stefan Dösinger -
Tim Schmidt -
Tom Wickline