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List:       kde-community
Subject:    Re: Fundraising in KDE
From:       Boudewijn Rempt <boud () valdyas ! org>
Date:       2020-09-28 7:59:56
Message-ID: 2618820.BEx9A2HvPv () boud-thinkpad-t470p
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On Sunday, 27 September 2020 21:36:46 CEST Vincent Pinon wrote:


> Very regularly, we have video editors asking how to give money (amounts 
> 10€ to 100€) to boost development of that tool highly useful for them.
> When we answer to give to KDE, who shares the infrastructure and funds 
> the sprints, they express they would prefer a more dedicated donation to 
> pay for development (bug solving, feature development...)

At this point, I'd advise you to do what I did: create a foundation, get a bank \
account and take donations in. For applications like Blender, Krita, Kdenlive that's \
really the only way to go because your users and potential supporters won't \
understand an umbrella organizagtion like KDE.

Especially once the majority of users is on Windows, the KDE story won't lead to \
donations. KDE needs to find its supporters in the free software and Linux world.

> The tiny team can't answer these requests on spare time (or it takes 
> years). No one is ready to abandon their job, finding a good person to 
> hire seems not easy, maybe contracting a consultant would be a 
> solution... But then how to gather the funds? As KDE eV can't allocate 
> money to a specific project (if I understand correctly), we would need 
> to create a new structure: none of us is interested in this kind of 
> paperworks and risks associated (having read about Krita Fundations 
> difficulties few years back)...
> 
> Also, we know that our Windows downloads are increasing by tens of 
> thousands every month, it was also suggested to ask for 1€ (or free 
> amount) for these binaries (as GCompris also did sometime), but again, 
> where to put that money ? It could be for eV (?)
> I haven't been motivated to look at the stores stuff, as long as we 
> don't know where to put the money...

Don't ask for too little. A 1€ application will be perceived as having less value \
and utility than a 10€ application. We went for 10€ on all platforms because we \
both wanted to undercut our 39,99€ competitors (Clip Studio and Affinity Photo) and \
because we wanted store customers to believe that Krita has a value.

> So my questions are :
> can eV gather money from Kdenlive binaries on Windows ? (and maybe Mac 
> someday, both thanks to Craft and binary-factory \o/)
> Can it use it (or part of) to pay consultants on that project ? If not, 
> is anyone ready to help for the extra administrative work ?
> 
> It's true that not accepting these donations maybe holds back that 
> project from increasing as rapidly as many users are expecting...
> 
> Thanks for all the great things in KDE,
> 
> Vincent
> 
> 


-- 
https://www.krita.org


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