Fundraising in KDE

[Uli Klinkhammer]

On 2020-09-23 11:26, jens at ohyran.se wrote:
>> 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?
>
> What would we or those developers sponsored be able to deliver to those 
> organisations that would justify their cost?

Organisations in general have A LOT of money. So I think we should focus
on that. I have no statistics underlying my thoughts, but I imagine that
hundreds of thousands of companies and organisations worldwide are using
one of the KDE maintained operating systems like Neon or Kubuntu. They
are saving A HUGE amount of money by doing this.

So, why not separating the userbase into a private and an organisational
part? By doing this, we could target the later one in a better and more
intensive way.

For sure, this is already done in some way, by having different type of
donations. But I mean maybe going a step further, maybe by releasing
different types of Neon and Kubuntu? (private / organisational edition?)

This could solve also in some way the problem with the abuse the
freeriders do. We could release the new edition under a special license
we could workout together.


>
> 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.


For sure, it would be great to establish a deeper connection with the
organisations and to see, what their needs are.


On 2020-09-24 11:42, Nicolas Fella wrote:

> I would be cautious about creating a system that allows targeted
> donations for specific features/requests. I don't want the e.V. to be in
> a position where work is done/prioritized because it brings in money.


I agree 100%.

I think that the Organisations should have some kind of "vote", but at
the end, the Community and the Developers should decide what to
implement and what not.


greez,

Uli