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

[Michael Niedermayer]

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 ...


> 
> 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)


> 
> 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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