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Advertising, fund-raising and other - Whats your opinion?


d00p

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Hello Froxies,

 

You all may know or can imagine, that when managing a open source project it sometimes comes to the point where you have to think about money. We don't want you to think that we want to ask for money here - we would never do that. We just like to hear some ideas how you think we could manage this. There are quite a few things we have to pay at this moment such as domains, developer meetings and the new support-hotline we want to set up for you, which also costs us a few bucks per month (more info about that will be published when we've finished the setup).

 

So we thought about what to do and came up with three possible solutions:

 

1. place some ads in the forums (which we don't like very much, but could help a lot)

2. start a fund-raising (which will then be once, no monthly payments)

3. find sponsors (which is not as easy as it may sound as we cannot provide contribution receipts)

 

What would be your favorite? Do you have any other ideas? Any help is appreciated and welcome.

 

Thanks in advance,

the Froxlor team

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What would be your favorite? Do you have any other ideas? Any help is appreciated and welcome.

I think the usual way to capitalize on open source software is the best way to go:

  1. Create a small company that can write valid fiscal invoices; it might even be possible to make it a gGmbH (German charitable Ltd.) to save on taxes
  2. Sell consulting and support contracts (that include a hot-line)
  3. Provide a pay-per-call hotline (i.e. 0900 number or similar charging scheme) for those customers who don't want to commit to a contract
  4. Charge for specific feature requests (and then have the requestor give them to the open source domain if he wishes to)

I think from the consulting and support contracts alone, you should be able to generate enough income to pay off a chunk of the froxlor-incurred costs.

 

just my ? 0,02.

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You could sell special licenses to remove especially the copyrights in quellcode or footer or something. It's quit a idea I got. I can't realize many users will buy this license but why not thinking about? In this way you can earn a lot of money..

 

Placing (text or/and image) google ads (or something else) above or next (right) to the board would be possible.

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I think the usual way to capitalize on open source software is the best way to go:

  1. Create a small company that can write valid fiscal invoices; it might even be possible to make it a gGmbH (German charitable Ltd.) to save on taxes
  2. Sell consulting and support contracts (that include a hot-line)
  3. Provide a pay-per-call hotline (i.e. 0900 number or similar charging scheme) for those customers who don't want to commit to a contract
  4. Charge for specific feature requests (and then have the requestor give them to the open source domain if he wishes to)

I think from the consulting and support contracts alone, you should be able to generate enough income to pay off a chunk of the froxlor-incurred costs.

 

1) we do have that (NuTime UG, see imprint)

2) and 3) are only possible if there's one who does this as a fulltime job

4) nice idea so far

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yes, i don't know how much you would like to raise but 2$ dollars a month for some usefull extras should be easy to pay for everyone

 

I would not yet go with full open source commercilaizition because i think the amount of user base is not so big

but that is just my guess

 

 

You mean like some kind of paypal-"subscription"?

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2) and 3) are only possible if there's one who does this as a fulltime job

I partially agree. For the hotline bit, it's desirable to have someone there full-time, but you could still say "our hotline can be reached at these and those times". Makes it a bit cumbersome for clients, but then again, it's a start...

And for the consulting/support contract stuff: I think everything is possible if you are upfront and honest about it. If you go ahead and tell your clients, "we will sell you support but we can only guarantee this and that response time", some might buy it, some might not - at least you have offered it.

It should not be uncommon in the open-source community that developers are struggling to make a living off their software and that they have to support it by having a day job.

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yes, i don't know how much you would like to raise but 2$ dollars a month for some usefull extras should be easy to pay for everyone

 

We don't have any amount in mind we have to reach - every bit helps. i like your idea of this "monthly payment"...

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the thing with even small monthly payments is sort of assurance that you will get something every month and that you can count on it, another thing is that if it is not much money than the users will not likely cancel it, especially when it will be made as paypal regular monthly payment which is possible, 12 * 2$ = 24$ a year that is for person managing servers like what, 2 hours at work, that's like nothing but multiplying it with let's say 50 users thats 100 bucks a month, that's not that bad for a start ...

 

but still that something extra has to be enough usefull thing to attract

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  1. Charge for specific feature requests (and then have the requestor give them to the open source domain if he wishes to)

 

Instead of buy a feature, I would prefer to priorize dedicated feature requests for money. Then they are released as normal for the public.

So it would be possible to push features that are not important for all.

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Hi.

 

I think charging some monthly amount it's the equivalent of Plesk/Cpanel licenses (personally, I want to make a switch from Plesk).

 

Solutions:

1. Google Ad's, non-intrusive, could generate some money.

2. Advertise on www.buysellads.com.

3. Something I did see on SysCP Mantis: Issue sponsoring (some people would pay to see a bug/feature resolved/added sooner).

4. Site Donations, with optional links in main site

5. Offer services (maybe with external help/people): Install, Config, Setup, Customization (standard or customized themes)

 

Note: adding an API sooner will lead Froxlor to commercially environment (HostBill added in v1.4.6 support for ISPConfig 3, even it's in beta stage and has an incomplete API: just create and delete account, without account suspending. WHMCS will not support any control panel without a proper API).

 

My 2 cents.

 

Regards,

/Sorin

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My 1 cent thoughts :

 

google ads if needs to be. It is extremly pleasent to have a forum without any adds. Maybe 2 versions of the forum (with/without ads); pay for without.

It would be interesting to see how many users (servers) are out there using froxlor. This would give an idea how much could be raised.

pay for features, good idea.

sponsers, yes. Is this option currently available ?

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I would prefer a paypal subscription (maybe subscription as an option) with a small additional feature like "automated life update", as the Typolight/Contao project (EUR 9,99/year, http://www.contao.org) does.

 

Anton

 

:D Are you a contao fan, too? Ouh yeah :)

 

life update for froxlor isn't very userful because the admins have to edit some files or something else yourself. statement of d00p.

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  • 4 weeks later...

As in the famous saying, if you do not know which port you wish to arrive, no wind can help you.

 

I believe, the first step has to be the decision about how much money is needed. Without a target number, no discussion could help us.

 

How much money is this thread talking about?

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Server management. It could be Froxlor management :)

 

I pay more per Cpanel instance. I could switch a few of my servers, which do not use reseller interface, from Cpanel to Froxlor if you handle management. By management, I mean the installation, basically. If you would be interested, we could go further to make a more specific description.

 

This could also provide a real business environment to see what needs to be improved in Froxlor.

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For installation/management i think "froxlor-help.net" is a better contact (which does that professionally) but on the other hand, that would not help Froxlor itself :)

 

I hope you can understand that we - the Froxlor dev team - have not enough time to handle server management for others

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