Re: alternatives for funding (was: I want to give you money but it can't be called a donation)

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Fri, 2013-12-06 at 13:55 -0200, Felipe G. Nievinski wrote:
   
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
> <address@hidden> wrote:

>> Most of these methods are unacceptable to us because they involve
>> the creation of non-free software. In particular, the frequent
>> suggestion to sell non-free versions of Octave add-ons like a GUI
>> or Octave-Forge packages are non-starters.

> I was suggesting selling Octave as-is, with the addition of a nice CD
> and packaging plus a limited-period priority support.

Is it ok if we just do a web download? The CD seems to me like rapidly
aging technology.

>> Perhaps we should improve the way we sell support, because even
>> though we're selling it, people like you think we're selling
>> something bad.

> Very bad: there's not even a price tag!

There's no price tag on Matlab either. You have to email them to get a
quote. This is fairly standard practice. I think we just need to make
the web page prettier, use stock photography and multiethnic smiling
people in business suits.

> It only says something vague like "we can help; email us and we'll
> talk". Octave needs a shopping cart with pre-defined fixed-price
> contracts, like RedHat offers for example:
> <https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html>

It would take some work to decide what are reasonable prices. It would
take market research. :-)

And frankly, we get very few people approaching us asking us for
support. We get far, far more people asking for a GUI that is easy to
install. And whenever I conduct informal market research asking what
people want, that's the most frequent answer. If a market for Octave
support exists, it's hiding very well or we are going to have to
create this market.

>> By the way, remember that GNU is more about free software than
>> "open source":
>
> Where I said open source please read FLOSS.

The words you choose are important. They carry specific weight. I'm
not telling you that "open source" is wrong, but that it carries with
it connotations that are not as important for a GNU package. I
understand you might think I'm quibbling about an unimportant detail
you don't care about, but I'm trying to make you care about it,
because it's at the foundation of what we are trying to do with
Octave.

>>> IMHO, the very existence of xoctave is evidence that selling
>>> octave as a box is profitable.
>>       
>>       
>> Xoctave is non-free software, and I consider it a GPL violation.
>>
>> Hopefully the upcoming GUI will make Xoctave obsolete, and it
>> doesn't seem like they've had huge success selling it, so it
>> doesn't seem like we need to make any further efforts to stop it.
>>       
>>       
> I doubt you know how many copies they sold.

No, I don't. But it also doesn't seem like a lot. If it were, we would
hear a lot more buzz about it, comparable to the number of requests we
get for a GUI, which are several per day. We also knew what their
download numbers were when it was free, and it wasn't high. We have
other numbers that we can use to estimate the number of Octave users,
for example, number of downloads on SourceForge and popcon in Debian
and Ubuntu.

> The problem is, as of now, xoctave is the only business-friendly
> no-hassle option for contributing monetarily to Octave.

No, this contributes to Xoctave, not to Octave. It doesn't help Octave
at all.

> Even individuals who would be inclined to make an in-kind donation
> -- of their time, materials and goods, etc. -- wouldn't make a money
> donation, especially outside the U.S. I'm afraid there's a huge
> cultural gap here.

I don't know, I'm not from the US, and I think donations are good.
Perhaps I'm in a cultural gap from everyone else.

>>> But I don't want to make a one-time purchase -- ideally it'd be
>>> offered for sale at large.

>> You want to make more than one purchase? I can draft a contract you
>> can show to your employer where you can renew every year.

> Alright, please go ahead.

Okay, I'll talk to the FSF and see if they can help me draft the contract.

>>  We are already working on ways to fund Octave, 

> If you could please point them out.

Unfortunately, the discussion happened in private. I gave you the
highlights so far, though: in the short term we are just going to ask
for donations in a nicer way. We'll see how that goes.

> I only found that above-mentioned commercial support page. I assume
> most developers find their own individual sponsor or customer.

Some of us have employers that let us devote our time to Octave.

>> That's not what "market research" means. When you do market
>> research, what you're doing is figuring out who's going to be
>> buying Octave.

> exactly same folks who currently buy xoctave.

I doubt it. A number of people understand that Xoctave is not related
to us and want to give us money, not Xoctave. These are the people we
have decided to target right now, the core fans, the people who
already love us, the ones like you who are trying to give us money but
can't because their employers don't understand what a donation is.

>> Instead, we are going to try to cater to the fans. The people who
>> are already using Octave and loving it, those are the people that
>> we want to convince to make donations.

> You're focusing on individuals at the expense of most companies which
> simply don't have a donation budget but would be happy to pay for
> Octave out of their annual software budget.

We are focussing on you, the individual at your company who wants to
give us money, not on your company that doesn't understand how to give
us money. At least not now. 

> Guys, please don't get me wrong. I'm just trying to help Octave
> flourish even more.

Of course, we all are.

I have actually toyed with the idea of creating a commercial startup
based around Octave, but I can't commit to this project yet, at least
not for a year. If I manage to get my idea off the ground, do you
think you would want to do commercial Octave support?

- Jordi G. H.