dreaming...

[Armijn Hemel]

hi Aaron, others (and Jos),

> > Ok all, I know an immature idea with little hope off success might not be
> > very attractive - but it never hurts to try. Anyone has any input?
> 
> for me, some important points were missing that would enable me to provide 
> useful feedback, namely:
> 
> * is this meant to be a project that will be driven by benevolent / charitable 
> funding, or is this meant to be a project that results in a mechanism to 
> create ongoing revenue in some way?

I'm not sure what you actually mean with this, so let me explain how
NLnet Foundation funds projects these days. In the old days, it was
pretty much "come with a cool project and we'll fund it (or not)" and
there were not too many strings attached. That worked kinda ok, but
there was no real focus. A few years ago the organisation changed: new
personnel was appointed who are very much focused on picking the right
projects to advance their goals and it is no longer anything goes. I
would say they are KDE friendly: in the past they have helped KDE with
for example the UPnP sprints in Paris and Barcelona, results of which
will go into 4.5. Their current focus is ODF (they sponsored KOffice and
Abiword ODF implementations) and privacy but if something really cool
comes along that does not entirely fit one of those profiles they will
not immediately reject it.

Their funding would be tied to concrete results and money is not given
up front. They are quite flexible when it comes to payment per milestone
though, but they definitely want to see progress. They like deadlines,
they like milestones, they like concrete results.

Funding is charitable, but if you *could* find a way to make it
profitable so the project can pay its own development in the long run, I
would say there would be a better chance to get funding. They do want
stuff to fall under a free software license. They prefer LGPL, AGPL and
GPL (mostly v3, because they co-funded development of the licenses), but
it depends on the context.

> * how would success be measured? simply by being shipping software that is 
> able to perform the "like, edit, upload" task? (we already have that in 
> plasmate right now, btw.) does success also mean "people are actually, really 
> using it", with some target # of adds/edits to aim for?

That is an extremely good question. Milestones do not necessarily have
to be purely technical. I personally think that adding a target for
"people are using it" would make it more attractive to fund, but of
course it is a vague target to hit.

armijn

-- 
Armijn Hemel, MSc

Loco (Loohuis Consulting)
Training, consultancy, hosting, and building
Specialized in Open Source solutions

http://www.loohuis-consulting.nl/