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Crowdfunding community projects

Would you support funding open source projects?


  • Total voters
    55

Nekiro

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Hi, you may know me from my free stuff probably downgrades, rcc editor etc.

You are probably aware that developing stuff takes time, more or less depends on what kind of project.
Time isn't free either, our time is limited after all.
I'm aware that something like that might be considered scam, but I'm talking about funding projects created by reputable members.

I'm curious what's your opinion on gofundme or any other crowdfunding platform.

Would you support funding open source projects?
Please also vote in poll, thanks.
 
Yeah agreed, I think a lot people would pay to see something like OTC or your downgrades be developed. But I would be hesitant, at least with OTC, without knowing that the money would actually support progress into the project, considering it's been dead for so long.
 
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Money makes the world go round. People pay for subscriptions to magazines, applications and more, why not spend a bit of cash here and there to help the development progress of something completely free?

I doubt there would be a massive flux of cash flowing anytime soon from the start of such a venture, however I do believe if the focus was on what the people wanted to see, there could be a great potential for the developers and end users.

I'm the kind of guy that pays when I see wikipedia asking for a donation though.... apparently not a lot of people actually do that though
 
A lot of people here waste a lot of money buying stuff so hopefully they could contribute to this too and see an actual decent return on their investment. I really like this idea, I'm absolutely sick of all the gatekeeping in the ot community.

It would have to work extremely well and be transparent though, this can't be a half assed attempt otherwise it will forever be tainted.
 
We already talked about light effects in RME for example.
That is something I am absolutely willing to support with hundreds of euros (if it's going to be open-source release).
Im in too with few hundreds to develop the light effects in RME. count with me
 
If you're in an open-source community to make money, you're at the wrong place.
Those are 2 different concepts and hes just asking about how that proposal would be received. I think if we pay for some code the community could benreactivsted and lore people would contribute for free.
 
Yeah agreed, I think a lot people would pay to see something like OTC or your downgrades be developed. But I would be hesitant, at least with OTC, without knowing that the money would actually support progress into the project, considering it's been dead for so long.
when you say OTC is dead, it seems my work is useless. 😢

...😄
 
open-source and free are not mutually inclusive.

Open-source is free to take, not free to make.
Time is the resource spent by some, to the benefit of all.

Whether or not the time spent is paid or donated doesn't change the end result. (open-source material)

--
If Nekiro / others can't afford to pay the time without monetary donations, progress get's stifled.

Is this different then how we've operated in this community previously? Yes.
Is it better/worse? Only time will tell.

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I see no issue with wanting/needing compensation, as long as they are transparent with their intentions & goals.

Transparency along with frequent (weekly?) updates to the people wanting to support the continued development would be something I'd want to see.
 
I think the request is very reasonable, I've always been a supporter of such ideas.

It's important to acknowledge that this community is already very scarce on technically able people that could contribute meaningful fixes and additions to the code, and the reality is that this knowledge doesn't come easily or cheaply earned, and once one acquires it, there are much greener pastures than open-tibia, both for further personal growth of knowledge and for earning money -

And there is a very small amount of gratification such a developer can derive from continuously completing diminishingly mentally stimulating tasks to effectively feed silent onlookers and leechers with content to make money off of. The least that can be done is to voluntarily offer some arbitrary financial compensations for their time to both support their decision to apply their knowledge and to validate the usefulness of their efforts through that.

True, there are always some people who will be an exception to this, though in my experience observing all this, it's usually cause they either have an insufficient tenure with that type of work or personal goals that they've set which they're yet to achieve. Sooner or later, everyone drifts off, and having a monetary backing as an incentive to finish at least 1 more contribution may be a difference between a new very important fix or patch being added to the repo versus waiting for months until the next capable individual comes along.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, cherish and support your fellow devs as much as possible while they're here, it won't be forever.

If you're in an open-source community to make money, you're at the wrong place.
That's exactly the place where you can make a lot of money if you disregard some ethical implications... OTs being exhibit A. It would be productive if people around here stopped pretending that this whole thing is some kind of humanitarian endeavor while most knowingly use it as a basis for generating income in one way or another.

There is a big difference between crowdsourcing backing for the development of a feature to be released as open-source, and commissioning someone to do a private job for you and you and alone. Nekiro is not talking about the latter.
 
Forget about crap like gofundme or patreon (for devs). Github Sponsorship is the way. And don't pay for the future, pay for the work that has been done, or is being done right now.
That way there is no expectations, no disappointment, no scam. (if there is, you can always cancel it).
And the dev is not pressured to sign off if whatever project he was paid to do is not worth his time.

I have been sponsoring Nekiro on github for about half a year now with monthly donations, I use his 8.6 protocol downgrade. Simple and easy. Thanks for the code, and whatever you do with the money is none of my business.

I do think more people should do the same, especially if they profit on it with their own server.
So I guess I'm against funding community projects, but for funding their developers, which indirectly funds the community projects.
Whatever you are interested in or use, figure out who is contributing there already now, and fund them. Chances are they are going to have more time or motivation to continue to work for that project you are interested in.

when you say OTC is dead, it seems my work is useless. 😢

...😄

@Mehah Create a Github Sponsors page, that way I don't forget to donate, and that way PayPal don't take half your cut.
 
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Yes, projects that either benefits me or that I want to support, only if it was hosted on a 3rd party website/service though.

Maybe we could make a thread where people post their own projects / contributions they're ready to make together with their crowdsource account id/link?

Does anyone know if the various crowdsourcing sites supports automatically refunding people's money if the incentive is not met, or if they have any policies regarding quality or scams, such as if promises by the founder are not delivered?


Regarding OTClient that's been brought up several times already here, the elephant in the room that no one will talk about, and maybe are not aware of, is that Diath who controls the OTClient repo nowadays is holding the repo back by gatekeeping it, he incorrectly marks issues with other issues that aren't related, refuses to change these marks, he doesn't take feedback, he acts as toxic as some of the most toxic members of this forum, rejects PR's based on nothing or legacy ideas from 2012 like "lets keep OTClient c++11 forever! (why? I don't know, I don't need to explain myself!)" and "we should NEVER introduce cryptography because it's 'against open source', however keep stats.lua that sends all your information to an external server is totally fine, leave that module alone, nothing anti-open source about preinstalled malware!".

Both Diath and Iryont has been gatekeeping the OTClient repo / blocking PR's for years, this is why it died imo, and why OTLand tried to start their own repo, but which also died out.

What I think we need to resurrect OTClient is more coordination and leadership, discussing what direction we want to go in, what we want to prioritize fixing, prioritize changing, if we should try redesigning certain things etc, and what we should do about edubart's repo, if we should try to take it back or use OTLand's repo or what.
Less censorship, more constructive discussion without arguing about who's stupid and mocking each other like a bunch of teenagers, and hype for new features and solutions, crowdsourcing would help as well, I tried to do this before by offering to publish solutions to OTClient for the price I paid for a freelancer to solve it, but it probably didn't receive enough attention from simply being a github issue, and eventually a guy in mehah's repo fixed it for free, which is sort of nice of him, but it kinda ruins the whole point, I only spent my time posting that bug in the first place with the idea of crowdsourcing bug fixes, if someone suddenly does it for free I'll have to stop posting bugs that I've fixed since I'm just spending money on solutions that nobody will pay me back for, so it's just a loss of money of me, not in terms of revenue but in terms of already made costs.
 
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