[geeklog-devel] ACCU: Funding Open Source

[Dirk Haun]

ACCU conference report, part 2:

The presentation on funding open source development mainly revolved
around bounties and EU funds, both of which don't really apply to us
(i.e. to Geeklog). There was one interesting idea, though (see below).

Bounties: Some organisations are willing to pay for the development of
certain open source software. So they specify what has to be written and
give the money to the first person or group that comes along and actually
implemented it. Mark Shuttleworth is running such a scheme, see <http://
www.markshuttleworth.com/bounty.html>.

EU funds: There aren't any specific EU funds for developing open source
software, but several of the existing funds could be applied to open
source developement. The problems are that 1) the funds are only
available for new developments and 2) they involve a lot of paper work
(to the extend that it is recommended to actually hire someone
specifically to do the paperwork).

Another interesting concept that was mentioned is that of "sponsoring"
the implementation of new features or bug fixes in existing applications.
Say that, for example, a person or a group of persons would be willing to
pay someone to implement a specific feature and that the result would
then be integrated into the application. This could be done by either the
actual developers or by some external party.

Paying for bugfixes sounds a bit odd at first. However, if you look
through our list of open bugs, you'll find a few long-standing but
annoying ones. Take, for example, the backslash issue (i.e. backslashes
disappear from postings). I have a rough idea what the problem is and I
do know that it will require a lot of work (and testing) to fix it. So
even though I consider it pretty embarrassing to have such a seemingly
trivial bug in our software, I just couldn't persuade myself yet to
tackle it. A bit of cash could just be enough to bring myself (or someone
else) to finally do it.

Surely, this shouldn't become the standard path to get new features or
bugfixes into Geeklog. Since all of us developers use Geeklog to run
sites of our own, there is enough motivation to continue to develop (and
debug) it anyway. But sponsorships could help getting specific features
into the software.

Food for thought (and open for discussion).

bye, Dirk


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