Re: Thinking about putting together a grant to support development onLilyPond

[David Kastrup]

"Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote Thursday, February 09, 2012 5:57 AM
>
>> there is a large inheritage of great music that is already in the public
>> domain.  LilyPond would be a great contender for maintaining publically
>> accessible databases of importance.  What is needed for that is a
>> robustness in the sources:
>>
>> a) getting serious quality without version-specific tweaks
>> b) a dependable upgrade plan when LilyPond advances
>> c) good conversion to MusicXML
>> d) possibly also good import
>> e) good human readability in case machine translation fails for some
>>   reason
>> f) reasonably easy machine readability outside of LilyPond
>>
>> Maintaining a cultural database in proprietary formats like Finale is a
>> recipe for trouble: if at one point company or format or compatibility
>> fail, the content becomes inaccessible.  This is a big selling point for
>> LilyPond, and if it makes progress in some other areas, it will become
>> interesting for this sort of task also outside of the public domain
>> area.  If it becomes commercially viable to reissue classics using a
>> public LilyPond database as a starting point, there will be a sizable
>> market for LilyPond skills.
>>
>> But I don't see us there yet, and a good part of my focus is on work
>> leading there.
>
> Would kickstarter be a way of getting started?
>
> http://www.kickstarter.com/

If one can put together a good roadmap.  But in this case, the "let's
put up a front for collecting money for David" angle is insufficient.
There is a considerable amount of planned work to do by different
people.  Personally, I am lousy at following plans: I am good at
shoveling crap that annoys me at the moment and replacing it with saner
things.  I am excellent at that, but it is not the whole job.  So while
I certainly would enjoy working as _part_ of such a plan, we would
_definitely_ need more ways to turn money into progress than just
myself, or things are doomed to failure.  And this also means that we
need considerable more funding than a "let's keep David working on
LilyPond as he considers fit at the moment because he is such a nice,
uh, because he seems to be good at it" fund would require.

Of course, the first kind of fund might be a decidedly easier package to
sell, but then we also need to think about how we can deliver.  I know
myself well enough to know that I don't have the self-control to pull
this through alone.

-- 
David Kastrup