Funding work on TWiki

When many companies benefit yet the opensource developers who write and maintain the code are not getting paid by anyone, the situation is clearly unsustainable. Both Crawford and I have expressed an interest in GettingPaidToDevelopTWiki, and there are some fairly major areas that could do with dedicated developers.

Google:Open+Source+Funding found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Funding - getting donations to help pay for development time would greatly benefit the project, like it has done for many other projects.

If any of you have experience or just interest in helping establish such a process, please write here.

-- MartinCleaver - 04 Dec 2004

With regard to a note I just saw on SpacedWikiWordPlugin:

There are three ways plugins get updated:

1. When someone contributes and integrates a change (i.e. the person wanting it does it themselves)
   1. If you contribute a change and the author has requested to remain in control (i.e. the CVSModificationPolicy is ContactAuthorFirst), then it is reasonable to mail the author and then give a couple of weeks to incorporate the change. (After that, we need a way to escalate to get the flag reset to PleaseFeelFreeToModify)
2. When the author wants to make a change.
3. When someone else can persuade the author to do some work. This requires two things:
   1. The author knows (you have to mail the author)
   2. Its not too much work for the author. If what needs doing is urgent for you and not a priority for the author your best bet is to offer to pay money (e.g. PayPal) for the author to do the work for you. You might be able to get a receipt for it directly, if not and one is important to you (perhaps you can charge it) alternatively you could offer to purchase something for the author. I'd venture that about US$40 an hour would be reasonable.
4. When you can barter for your change requests. This can be especially practical if each of you maintain a plugin that the other wants a change written for

-- MartinCleaver - 04, 14 Dec 2004

Funding from universities

We're currently using TWiki as a tool for coordinating research projects as well as in teaching. In the nearer future we will have to decide to either a) abandon TWiki and use a university- (or at least facilty-)wide accepted solution or to b) modify TWiki so that it pleases other faculties as well. If we opt for b) then we'll have to raise some money/get some funding for coding extensions/modifications.

I'm not sure but I think it would be worthwile to have something like a "university sales brochure" - arguments for using TWiki in university environments and also identifying the drawbacks of TWiki. Thus, if someone is to make a software decision, he can more easily compare strengths and weaknesses and judge the potential. The question is quite often not "what features does/doesn't it have" but rather "how much would it cost to add this feature" (for example integration with other platforms such as WebCT).

-- ChristianKohl - 15 Dec 2004

Just to pose a counter point, working on opensource is a personal decision and no one is forcing anyone to do so. If you work on a project for a company, then you are being paid by that company.

It seems that people should take responsability for their choices. People choose to work on opensource or not. Simply because companies might benefit from open source software does not mean the situation is unsustainable. It means that the motive of the people are not to create a useable product, but rather some other motive that conflicts with companies useing the software.

-- EricHanson - 28 Jun 2006

I think there's a good example on the impact of personal decisions in some discussions in IRC. As an example in a discussion from 02 Aug 2006 it is clearly shown how anyone is free to reject direct requests to help on what other community members feel are important to the project and instead head off to work on their own "shiny-new-thing-of-preference". Not a bad thing per se.

Taking this kind of luxurious position is really only natural for open source / human behaviour in general, and imho just means we should take extra good care in recognizing the efforts that deal with the more basic "necessities" of the project.

Funding TWiki sounds like an appealing idea (who would mind a little extra $?), but there is a natural risk that funding will be directed only towards "shiny-new-things". This is not necessarily a GoodThingTM, and we should do our best to avoid ending up in a scenario like that, imho.

-- SteffenPoulsen - 02 Aug 2006