According to http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bund-foerdert-Open-Source-Projekte--/meldung/... Germany's going to put 20 million euros into open source. They'll probably throw it all down a rathole, but hey, maybe some small fraction will go to useful projects.
If anyone's at LinuxTag, maybe it would be worth wandering over to Halle 7.2a, Stand 111 and chat the projects up to see if any of them have any interest in Wine...
On Saturday 27 June 2009 02:16:42 Dan Kegel wrote:
Ah, damn, that was like a day late. I won't make it in time today. However, the way I read the article, (most of) the money is planned to be spent on improving software already in use at some agencies. No idea if this already includes Wine or not. :)
Cheers, Kai
Kai Blin wrote:
Who would they give the money to, even if they wanted to give it to us? We don't have any real infrastructure for handling those kind of donations (nor seeking them, for that matter).
Perhaps it's time for me to dust off that Wine Foundation idea.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
2009/6/29 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
Who would they give the money to, even if they wanted to give it to us?
Codeweavers?
On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Ben Kleinshacklein@gmail.com wrote:
Is a private for-profit company.
Is there something wrong with putting it in the Wine development fund, under custody of the Software Freedom Conservancy?
Austin English wrote:
For starters, we don't have any clear indicator of what we'd do with a large windfall. We don't even communicate well what we do with very small donations.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On Monday 29 June 2009 01:22:00 Austin English wrote:
Yes. Realistically, there will be a contract involved regulating what needs to be done to get the money. I very much doubt the government just go and drop money on random paypal buttons and hope for the best. The way I've seen stuff like this work before is that there's a call for bids from companies to implement certain features in a piece of software, maybe with the requirement at a reasonable effort to get the produced changes upstream.
My two cents, Kai
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:46 AM, Kai Blinkai.blin@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, misunderstood what you meant there.
Eventually some sort of foundation would be the best thing to head toward, but that's a legal headache.
On Monday 29 June 2009 07:51:03 Austin English wrote:
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 12:46 AM, Kai Blinkai.blin@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see how a foundation would help with a a situation like that. To recap the (theoretical) situation. Someone, let's call him the client, wants some features implemented in Wine and is ready to spend money on that.
Now, there's three things the client could do. He could hire some developers to get the stuff he wants implemented. That's a huge administrative effort just to get some lines of code done, and as you tend to pay employees by work-hours, you need to estimate how long it will take to implement the feature.
The more obvious thing to do (IMHO) is to go and contract somebody, company or individual to implement these features. As opposed to an employment contract, you usually agree on what needs to be delivered and pay only if it is delivered.
Now what I understood you're suggesting is that instead of contracting a company or individual, the client could give the money to a Wine Foundation. How is that money going to turn into the code the client wants to have? Is the Wine Foundation going to hire Wine developers to work on such stuff? Is there enough money in development services like that to offer a stable job to any developer?
Cheers, Kai
Kai Blin wrote:
There may very well be - Mozilla had a few full time employees years ago, and at the time they had about as many users as we do.
That doesn't even count other roles a foundation could play, such as community organizing, developer recruiting, sponsoring "summer of code" projects year round, or even just serving as a tax deduction for Codeweavers' donated code.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Scott Ritchiescott@open-vote.org wrote:
A full foundation could give us advantages like that. I really think that we could raise quite a bit of money (just see what other projects are receiving). We mainly lack good goals and policies what we should do with it. Sponsoring WineConf and perhaps even developers makes sense.
The danger is of course competing with Codeweavers but I don't think it would be better for both. Right now Codeweavers works on areas which are critical to get programs they support working. This includes 'boring' stuff like msxml, msi, jscript and other parts which volunteers barely work. There are also big parts like our beloved DIB engine which take a lot of resources and might only get implemented if there is a serious need or a big paying customer. Else it is too expensive.
I can imagine that if we had some good goals and organize lets say 1 or 2 fund raisers a year you might be able to raise 50k. This could be used for purposes like the ones explained but parts can also be used to sponsor Codeweavers (or an external developer) on things like a DIB engine which else never get implemented.
Thanks, Roderick
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 1:18 AM, Kai Blinkai.blin@gmail.com wrote:
No, that's not what I was saying. I was actually referring to the comment about random paypal buttons and a lack of a real infrastructure for accepting donations.
For the (theoretical) problem of what to do with a large (potential) donation, that's a whole different problem.
On Monday 29 June 2009 08:40:47 Austin English wrote:
Yeah, but Dan wasn't talking about donations. The money the German government is planning to spend will be project-bound, for someone to implement stuff they want.
Cheers, Kai
-
Austin English -
Ben Klein -
Dan Kegel -
Kai Blin -
Roderick Colenbrander -
Scott Ritchie