On Friday 01 January 2010 19:16:24 Krishnakant wrote:
On Fri, 2010-01-01 at 17:47 +0530, narendra sisodiya wrote:
Money collection is not a issue, distribution can be a issue ! Govt of India has a lots of funds for better projects and works. one should take advantage of those money and put into right direction.
Totally agreed.
For example, GNUKhata, the project I initiated and Brought this far is now stable and ready for use, this happened due to the generous funding from NIXI and support of Comet. But now we will soon die out of funds and might not be able to sustain development at the current pase. Voluntary time given by a bunch of hackers can't make commertial quality software.
I disagree. In the past i needed some features in a certain package and wrote to the main developer who was then a research student, asking for a quote for the features. He said that he was too busy studying and would not be able to commit a time bound schedule. He also asked me to contact another team member. That 2nd developer was too busy with the same project, which he used commercially in NZ. So we wound up doing it in house.
So if we need high performance accurate and commertial grade free software, dedicated team has to work full-time and such a team can only work with some financial security.
That is a proposal for a startup. If it is ready for use AND has a market you are in business. It is an issue faced by every new product / project / business. You need to build your business case and give it to a VC / bank / FI.
Please dont expect to sustain a core business team on donations. I might also add that even FLOSS projects need marketing to attract developers. It means that you start posting about your project from day 1 and keep going, often alone for years. If it is interesting you attract followers and developers and eventually build a community. If you dont attract followers you seriously have to rethink whatever it is you are doing.
I think there might be many such projects which need such support and the proposed idea is not bad at all.
There will be projects with specific achievable goals like a specific language localisation, or documentation or a adding a set of features for an existing packagethat could benefit from such small funding.