Crowdfunding
Posted: 10 Nov 2014, 11:19
I know crowdfunding has been discussed before and basically rejected, but the reason I am bringing it up again is a long story.
You may have noticed my OpenMW-related activity has dwindled slowly over the past weeks. Well, there comes a time in any person's life where they need to get a job, or engage in other capitalist-related activities. Apparently that time has come for me now.
I've been setting up my own freelance business. The long-term goal is that I can take on the minimum amount of clients I need to be able to live comfortably, and spend the rest of my time working on OpenMW. Sounds naive? That's because it is. It may be years until I get there, or never happen. Who knows. I need to build a solid client base and decent backup reserves before I have the guts to turn down offers like that.
So that's what I've been working on, and it's taking up the majority of my free time. On the OpenMW side, I'm now barely keeping up with triaging/fixing bugs and reviewing pull requests. There is so much more I want to do and so little time to do it. This is kinda sad, we are very close to OpenMW 1.0, yet at the current rate it may still take years to get there. On the optimization front, the Ogre 2.0 port is still in a completed draft state, but I did not get around to starting an implementation.
This is why I did set up a donation button on my blog. Just a little bit would go a long way. I live pretty cheap, if $500 were to be raised, this would buy me a month of working on OpenMW full-time. I recall there have been concerns in the past regarding donations for OpenMW, so I set it up as a personal "buy me a pizza" type thing, with no promises attached. Unfortunately, this has not generated enough (read: 0) interest. Not very surprising, as I do realize most people want a clear picture on how the money would be used.
So this is why I'm bringing up the crowdfunding topic. Many people have expressed their intent to donate to OpenMW, and I see it mentioned again on IRC and Reddit every now and then. Given my personal situation, I'm asking whether we could reevaluate the legal concerns regarding donations. I also found it interesting that the guys over at OpenRA, another FOSS engine reimplementation project, apparently have no issues with crowdfunding.
If the answer is still "no" and stays that way, then, as much as I hate to say it, my best bet might be to fork the OpenMW project, take the full legal responsibility and attempt the crowdfunding myself.
You may have noticed my OpenMW-related activity has dwindled slowly over the past weeks. Well, there comes a time in any person's life where they need to get a job, or engage in other capitalist-related activities. Apparently that time has come for me now.
I've been setting up my own freelance business. The long-term goal is that I can take on the minimum amount of clients I need to be able to live comfortably, and spend the rest of my time working on OpenMW. Sounds naive? That's because it is. It may be years until I get there, or never happen. Who knows. I need to build a solid client base and decent backup reserves before I have the guts to turn down offers like that.
So that's what I've been working on, and it's taking up the majority of my free time. On the OpenMW side, I'm now barely keeping up with triaging/fixing bugs and reviewing pull requests. There is so much more I want to do and so little time to do it. This is kinda sad, we are very close to OpenMW 1.0, yet at the current rate it may still take years to get there. On the optimization front, the Ogre 2.0 port is still in a completed draft state, but I did not get around to starting an implementation.
This is why I did set up a donation button on my blog. Just a little bit would go a long way. I live pretty cheap, if $500 were to be raised, this would buy me a month of working on OpenMW full-time. I recall there have been concerns in the past regarding donations for OpenMW, so I set it up as a personal "buy me a pizza" type thing, with no promises attached. Unfortunately, this has not generated enough (read: 0) interest. Not very surprising, as I do realize most people want a clear picture on how the money would be used.
So this is why I'm bringing up the crowdfunding topic. Many people have expressed their intent to donate to OpenMW, and I see it mentioned again on IRC and Reddit every now and then. Given my personal situation, I'm asking whether we could reevaluate the legal concerns regarding donations. I also found it interesting that the guys over at OpenRA, another FOSS engine reimplementation project, apparently have no issues with crowdfunding.
If the answer is still "no" and stays that way, then, as much as I hate to say it, my best bet might be to fork the OpenMW project, take the full legal responsibility and attempt the crowdfunding myself.