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

[d00p]

We work for free, support for free on the forum, our irc channel and via e-mail. Of course we can put a link/logo/etc. on our sponsors page for you.

[asemen]

I would prefer not pay a monthly fee, but could be an pay version with some extras which are for some people interesting.

 

You could also think to add some adds on the administration panel e.g google addsense.

so user / admins could click on it and you will get some money for it.

 

Or add there a donate-button there.

 

Ask some server providers to donate e.g 1und1, Hetzner, IP-X, serverloft, euserv etc. they could do some howto install for customers.

 

A gift shop would be nice e.g some cups T-shirts penguins, lamps, mouses etc.

[chrisv]

If just 20,- Euros per month will really help you, I can pay this for the next year (PM me with a bank account #, if possible, so we can avoid the PayPal tax).

 

Some additional ideas for generating revenue/taking the project further:

 

1.) backlinks from a PR5 site (as froxlor.org is) are worth something. And as long as you dont overplay it, nothing bad will happen - BTDT

 

2.) people are much more willing to pay for something concrete. That's not only for psychologic reasons (if you get something in return, you can tell yourself that you have made a good deal. Also, seeing a concrete result as the consequence of your action is much more rewarding than just having supported the project somehow, without knowing whether it made a difference at all), but has also concrete implications for commercial enterprises: Paying for feature xyz is an expenditure ("Betriebsausgabe") and there is nothing a tax auditor can do about it. Donations, on the other hand, are much more difficult to get accepted.

 

3.) because of 2.), it would definitively be useful if one could "vote" for issues/feature requests with money

 

4.) another idea: getting enough donations to pay for a regular full-time developer will probably be difficult at this stage, except you find a really big sponsor. A much less expensive alternative would be an internship, provided you are willing and capable of overseeing that (there are some organizational requirements, and of course you also need someone acting as tutor). The advantage of internship is that you can really get something done in these two or three months, if you have a motivated intern. And the chance of getting something done may motivate people to donate (see 2.)...

[PCDSven]

Moin,

 

i'm no friend of advertisements...

What about placing a "Donate" Button on the website?

I have no problem to pay for good products/projects to keep them alive and froxlor is definitively one of them i would pay for!

 

just my 5 Cents

 

greets

Sven

[d00p]

thrre already is a donate button on the sponsors-page

[bedios]

We will support froxlor with a monthly donation (@doop you've got a mail).

[DerSeppel]

Hey guys,

 

you ARE based in germany aren't you? I'll still write in english to keep the others updated:

 

I guess you should really consider founding an registered association (eingetragener Verein, e.V.)

This would of course need some preparation work, as you would have to elect a commitee and write a by-law of you association.

 

But in the long run you would have a lot of benefits:

- You could issue contribution receipts

- Your work on the project could be considered a contribution too and therefore might be tax deductable.

- You would have a basic legal status.

- Consider the trust boost of a e.V. over a loose bunch of developers. This might help in finding a sponsor (i.e. a medium sized ISP?)

 

All other mentioned methods would be a lot easier to pull of then. For example, a support membership for people who want to support the project by a regular fee.

 

I think it could be worth the effort.

[d00p]

I guess you should really consider founding an registered association (eingetragener Verein, e.V.)

 

We discussed that. there is a lot of administrative stuff we would have to do for this (ber?hmte "Beh?rdeng?nge" usw.) which is not worth cutting of time for development. Also, we don't want to pay taxes or anything (what we surely would, cause i unsure if we would get a non-profit-organisation status). It's too complicated.

 

On the other hand - i like the support-membership idea. We already have a company which donates on a regular basis (Bedios eBusiness Solutions)

[DerSeppel]

I'm pretty sure there might be the possibility to get the status of a non-profit organisation. I.e "Wikimedia Deutschland" is a german e.V with the status of a non-profit organisation.

 

For example:

The "satzung" could aim of the organisation is to support the development of a high quality, free, open source control panel that is freely available for everyone.

 

 

More detail in german:

Ich denke schon, dass ein solcher Verein den Status der gemeinn?tzigkeit bekommen k?nnte. Das Vereinsziel muss nur "der Allgemeinheit" n?tzen. Wenn die Satzung zum Beispiel vorsieht, dass der Verein die Entwicklung qualitativ hochwertiger, freier software f?rdern soll, sollte das gehen.

Das Geld, welches eingenommen wird, darf dann nur diesem Zweck zugute kommen. Und es d?rfen keine Verm?gen ?ber ein bestimmtes Ma? angeh?uft werden. Die Spendeneinnahmen werden dann Satzungsgem?? verwendet um die Betriebsausgaben zu decken, ggf. Reisekosten die in Zusammenhang mit dem Vereinszweck entstehen. Evtl. kann sogar ein "Verdienstausfall" eines Vereinsmitglieds abgegolten werden.

Ich bin kein Profi f?r Vereinsrecht, aber ich sehe da kein allzu gro?es Problem. Der Vereinszweck h?tte durchaus Parallelen zu einem Verein in dem ich Mitglied bin - und wir sind gemeinn?tzig. Am besten fragt Ihr mal beim zust?ndigen Finanzamt nach.

Die Vorteile liegen eigentlich auf der Hand.

 

Tips zur Vereinsgr?ndung an sich: http://www.akademie.de/fuehrung-organisation/recht-und-finanzen/tipps/recht/e-v-leitfaden-verein-gruenden.html?page=1

[d00p]

In German (just to avoid any misunderstandings):

 

Haben wir alles schon durchgesprochen und uns informiert, der administrative Aufwand f?r die F?hrung eines Vereins ist einfach noch zu gro? im Moment, als das es sich f?r uns lohnen w?rde. Wir sind alle freiwillig und in unserer Freizeit bei Froxlor t?tig und m?chten ungern noch mehr unserer kostbaren Zeit mit Verwaltungsaufwand f?r einen Verein einbu?en.

 

Auch haben wir schon die M?glichkeit in Betracht gezogen uns einer externen Verwaltungsstelle f?r Open-Source-Projekte anzuschlie?en, allerdings erschien uns das zur Zeit einfach nicht notwendig. Die meisten Spender sind Privatleute oder kleine- bis mittelst?ndige Unternehmen die bisher keine Quittung verlangt haben.

 

Wie gesagt, wir stecken unsere Energie und Zeit lieber in die Weiterentwicklung als in die Verwaltung f?r einen Verein nur um "mehr Spenden" zu bekommen. Das ist nicht unser Prim?rziel und auch nicht das, was wir mit Froxlor erreichen wollen.

[bonzo]

Seppels idea is not bad. You would have to do some initial work but the benefits after are great.

 

But back to first post.

 

If you can earn some money with advertisments, do it. I could live with it.

Donate Button, do it.

I don't know what Sponsoring you need, but I'm sure a lot of people can help with servers, domains and things like that. I think you would get spoonsoring of that kind easier than money.

In my opinion you need some kind of marketing guy in your team who would handle this and you could develop.

 

You are a well known open source project and I#m sure many companies would like to see some kind of sponosring link on your page.

 

What I wouldn't like is payments on regular basis or payed support from the team.

As you said before, I would think you have no more time to develop and you are putting your resources to the support. Forum support as it is, is great. I wouldn't like if you, d00p, would not be so active in the forums anymore.

 

SO much woulds and coulds

[d00p]

Forum support as it is, is great. I wouldn't like if you, d00p, would not be so active in the forums anymore.

 

Thanks a lot

 

And I agree with you, spending too much time with 'getting money' or anything will definetly lead to less progress in development.

[securitywonks]

if development activity consistently start back, inflow can occur

 

as you already have donate option, highlight it on every page, if possible with donation statistics along with donation goal every month. This way, people tend to add some money each, which will help reach the target number as much possible,

 

I repeat, Please consider development with out gap, and move ahead,

 

if required, I can support with domain, hosting of this website etc...

 

something more than that, can be discussed and can be done as much possible over a period of time, along with project progress, thank you

[Scarya]

if development activity consistently start back, inflow can occur

 

as you already have donate option, highlight it on every page, if possible with donation statistics along with donation goal every month. This way, people tend to add some money each, which will help reach the target number as much possible,

 

I repeat, Please consider development with out gap, and move ahead,

 

if required, I can support with domain, hosting of this website etc...

 

something more than that, can be discussed and can be done as much possible over a period of time, along with project progress, thank you

 

At first it was pretty hard to understand what you wanted to say and I hope I got you right.

 

Hopefully the activity will increase again as soon as the hard time (examen, too much work) is over.

And we don't like to have a donation button on every page. That's what sponsors is for ;-)

A donation statistic is an interesting idea, we will discuss that.

 

Thanks for your offer hosting our site but it's already sponsored and we got many vServer for testing.

 

 

Greetings,

 

scarya

[securitywonks]

All the best:)

 

I do not remember the actual urls of donation statistics plugins, but they were there, even writing on our own is easy, give it a try,

 

thank you

[frontline]

Hello.

 

I was thinking about an idea, that could be used for both Froxlor 0.9 and 1.0: Donations/Payments for tasks.

Let's say I want a feature in Froxlor, and I want it sooner than scheduled.

Maybe a few users want the same feature, and we all are ready to give some money for this.

In Redmine you should have an option to donate/make a payment for one or more tasks.

 

This way, the users are happy and Froxlor team get some money from this.

 

What do you think ?

 

Regards,

/Sorin