[FFmpeg-devel] Sponsoring and generating money in general (IRC meeting follow-up)

[Robert Krüger]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:48 PM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 04:01:40PM +0100, Robert Krüger wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am starting a new thread as I think the IRC meeting thread itself
>> otherwise would potentially become a monster nobody could follow.
>>
>> I am trying to summarize a few things that were discussed and add some thoughts.
>>
>
>> Does "the project" want to generate more money?
>
> lets hope "the project" will reply
>
>
>>
>> It appears at least some people keep bringing up the topic and there
>> seem to be at least some ideas on how to spend it for the benefit of
>> the project.
>>
>> If the project generates more money, where will it go? (very
>> legitimate question by j-b)
>>
>
>> Apart from the small things like some hardware, travel expenses or
>> stickers the most obvious thing to me is to sponsor developers for
>> work on ffmpeg so they don't have do all of it in their spare time.
>
> agree
>
>
> [...]
>> What ways are there to generate money?
>>
>> 1) Offer development projects as crowd-funding projects and hope
>> enough interested companies (more likely than private individuals)
>> pledge so a financing goal is reached and the proposed package is
>> implemented. For this to succeed to me two things are crucial:
>>
>> - Choice of the feature that is implemented because one has to know or
>> be confident there is really enough commercial or private interest in
>> that. Since I believe many companies who work with ffmpeg (either
>> command line or API) read the mailing lists, it would not hurt to post
>> ideas there and see if there is informal feedback by people/companies
>> who would give money for a given cause or help spread the word to
>> lobby for it.
>>
>> - Have a well-defined goal. "Improving filter/codec/command line tool
>> X" is certainly not enough. If someone inside a larger company needs
>> to convince their boss to pledge 1000$ or more for such a project, the
>> boss will most likely ask if the project would make feature X in their
>> software work or not or what the concrete improvement will be
>>
>
>> With the current legal setup the individual developer(s) who implement
>> the offered feature/improvement for a given price that has to be
>> matched by the pledges of project backers, would be the contractor(s)
>> with the crowd-funding platform and no money would go to ffmpeg itself
>
>> (unless one would make it a condition that devs doing this would have
>> to donate X% of money generated through this to ffmpeg via SPI if the
>> project was advertised through official project channels like ML or
>> website or something like that).
>
> FFmpeg would already benefit from the work by the code that results
> from it ...

I that's consensus, even better.

>
>
>>
>> So, the next step would be to discuss ideas together with people who
>> offer the actual work on the ML.
>>
>> Btw. I forgot to credit Diego for making me aware of the Bountysource
>> platform which at first glance looks better suited than Kickstarter
>> and the like.
>>
>
>> 2) Offer a sponsoring program, something along the lines of companies
>> pay a certain annual amount to reach a certain sponsor status and are
>> listed on a page on the web site. I like the idea of treating small
>> companies differently, i.e. to reach bronze, silver, gold status a
>> company of 5 people has to pay a lot less than a company of 10000
>> people (that was the linuxfoundation example Michael gave but hey, I
>> am biased here as I run a small company).
>
> yes, i think we definitly should try this, at best it could improve
> our funds and allow us to pay for example new hw for many developers
> or even some sw development. At worst we waste a few hours setting
> up a html page (and half a month bikeshedding)

Exactly (hopefully with less bikeshedding).

>
>
>>
>> This is a no-brainer as the only thing needed AFAICS is defining the
>> terms and see if there are interested companies out there. I would
>> volunteer to make a first proposal how that could look and later do
>> some lobbying with companies I am/have been in touch with. Yes,
>> Kieran, there are probably many companies out there where bold
>> assholes work that sell standard ffmpeg features as their super-secret
>> invention and those you won't get. But there are countless others and
>> the few I have talked to have expressed the wish to be seen out there
>> as fair players and supporters.
>
> iam in favor of this moving forward, yes
>
> [...]
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB
>
> The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the
> dead. -- Aristotle
>
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