[Owncloud] Fwd: Flattr for the release?

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Saturday 08 October 2011 19:38:19 Michael Grosser wrote:
> 
>    - Do we want to be recognized as the open source ownCloud project or as
>    KDE e.V.?
> 
> *I think i's great to be a KDE project, but why not having a few things
> dedicated or at least ready to be dedicated?
> Using a dedicated flattr account would be a start.
> I'm not saying screw KDE, I just want ownCloud to be just ownCloud not
> matter who is the organization behind it.
> So have solutions only used with the ownCloud label. We are not using
> gitorious like /kde/owncloud.git we use owncloud/owncloud.git, so let's go
> with this labeling and use a dedicated account for flattr.
> I don't like the idea of: "So what we should do here is to motivate our
> users to donate to KDE e.V. (perhaps with a flattr button or something
> else) and than we can expect from the KDE e.V. to support our developer
> meetings and other expenses we have." Frank
> The user has the right to be sure he is donating to ownCloud and has the
> right to see it.*

Dedicated donations are two-sided sword. In KDE we usually avoid them. Most 
donations to KDE e.V. are not for a specific project. That helps projects a 
lot, because they get resources from the common pool. Especially those 
projects who are active and where is a lot going on, get a good share. I would 
count ownCloud as one of these active projects.

On the other hand, if projects get dedicated donations, then the question 
arises, why should they get additional funds from the common pool, when they 
have their own income. This is almost always a bad deal for the projects who 
go on their own, because the common pool is much bigger than what individual 
projects are able to raise.

If you want to be agile and get something done, I would recommend to fully 
embrace KDE e.V. as supporting organization behind KDE. ownCloud is a KDE 
project, so it can benefit from the organizational structure that we have 
built up over the last fifteen years there. So directing people who want to 
help ownCloud financially to KDE e.V. is the quickest and most efficient way 
to handle it, and probably quite a bit more beneficial to ownCloud than going 
a separate way.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>