Fundraising in KDE

[Carl Schwan]

Le mercredi, septembre 23, 2020 11:26 AM, <jens at ohyran.se> a écrit :

> > Yes, messaging -- for Blender it's easy because there are many companies
>
> > funding them for whom blender is a complement that replaces expensive
> > alternatives. It's different for KDE, so that needs good thinking.
> > Also... Just like Blender, KDE probably needs to setup a second legal entity
> > that can fund freelance developers for certain projects or even outright
> > hire them.
>
> This part is the tricky one to me. Where is the benefit for companies to
> sponsor KDE? I mean we have a group of different organizations that use Plasma
> for example - but how can we leverage that in to donations?

For large companies, we provide two products that can encourage them to invest
some money in:

* End-user applications that are used in a professional context (Kdenlive, Krita,
KDevelop, ...). For Blender, they receive considerable donations because they
provided a cheaper alternative to Maya and other big 3D creative suites. For KDE,
this is more difficult because 2d creation suites or IDEs are less expensive than
Maya for example. Still, I think we will always find companies who are interested
in replacing their €300/year/user system with a cheaper system and willing to
invest in the long term viability of the open-source system.

* The frameworks: Companies are investing €5000/year/developer for Qt and for
other libraries because it is more cost-efficient than reinventing the wheel and
maintaining their own custom libraries. This is an additional entry point for
corporate donations if we are able to convince them that using and supporting
financially the KDE frameworks is a good long term choice. I actually worked on
trying to improve the image of the frameworks with https://develop.kde.org/. This
still needs work on adding more content.

But I think the real strength of KDE is the huge amount of users around the
world and using KDE's software in various ways. Unlike Blender which targets
essentially 3D artists, KDE targets everyone with education software, graphic
software, developer tools, but most importantly Plasma and various KDE
applications making it able to use your computer with only open-source and
privacy-respecting software. I think many people would pay a bit, if we would
improve our communication around how the donation help making our software even
better and this will make their life easier.

This are just a few ideas and probably there are more possibilities to explore.

>
> What would we or those developers sponsored be able to deliver to those
> organisations that would justify their cost?
>
> The one thing I think could be done is contacting those organisations and
> simply dig through their usage, needs and wants and see what we are missing.
>
> That said, when we start doing this we will be tying ourselves to this model
> for a while which can have drawbacks too.