Solus Funding Initiative

xjdwc

Random thoughts. More curiosity from me lol

I'm curious if this is a viable approach or a problematic one. The following ideas are my own, and I am asking out of curiosity, in no way are these demands.

Solus being apart of the FOSS community, funding from the community is a great way for this ship to keep afloat.
Our current method of funding being Open Collective to cover Solus' infrastructure expenses annually. The odd payment to team members for a specific contribution etc.

So it got me thinking. As a community, is it not more than reasonable to utilize Open Collective to a greater degree? Are the following ideas reasonable/viable/possible? Is it even an approach the team/community would want to take? Does it create more noise and more problems than it seeks to solve? So, I'm wondering if this is a solution that can be used for Solus' benefit.

That being the idea of the team creating individual and separate events/projects for:

Specific bugs/problems
New resources/hardware
Improvements to current Solus technologies (eopkg>sol etc)
New Technologies
ISO's
Icon Sets/Themes
Website/Forum Refresh etc
New Software Center

So I guess the idea is for the team to discuss and evaluate Solus as a whole and which things may NEED funding for them to be addressed rather than neglected and pushed to the side. The team can even poll the community in the forums to help. Deciding on which things should take a priority and made a public project for the community to fund. Whether it be a specific member or multiple people on the team currently, or even sourcing outside talent to do the job and paying them for their work. Maybe I'm becoming idealistic.

So I guess in my head I'm seeing it like this:

The team being unable to take on certain tasks/projects due to limited time/resources etc --->
Presenting task/project to team and then community via forum--->
Community and team make a decision --->
Project/Event is made public for funding on Open Collective --->
Community funds the project, work commences? --->
Once Project is complete, contributor/s paid for their work --->

Obviously I'm not advocating for Solus to hide behind a pay wall for everything lol. FOSS FTW! I'm just curious to know if that would be a viable and beneficial solution for Solus's team/community. Just for the things that may need the extra support and that are worthy of funding. I only see it as a positive incentive. Maybe I'm blinded by my idealism. Does it make things messy if something like that were to become apart of Solus' operations.

I know for me as a Solus user, I'd love to support projects where I could if they were needing funding.
Am I crazy? Good idea? Bad idea? Let me know what you all think, love hearing what you all have to say.

🙂

WetGeek

xjdwc I'd love to support projects where I could if they were needing funding.

Interesting. I'm happpy letting the team decide what to do with my monthly contributions. I figure they know much better than I do what's most needed.

stalebrim

xjdwc

Solus to hide behind a pay wall for everything lol

Solus Premium 9,99USD/mo [/joke]

brent

xjdwc A Like to you because I admire and love to see someone's idealistic wheels turn--there's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing wrong with wanting to better fund and grow the solus brand/distro.
I'm guessing you will see more pronounced moves after Beatrice finishes her doctorate but I can't claim to know anything, and like wetgeek, I would also defer to the devs regarding dough.

Staudey

xjdwc While I in general think bug bounties and the like are a neat idea, what's currently mostly lacking in my opinion is manpower. While that's also possible to buy (in a sense), paying someone a (reasonable) salary/wage is a pipe dream at the moment. Also I think that revving up the PR machine with new blog posts, ISOs, etc. is more effective at attracting donations, than all this restructuring, while at the same time being closer to - and connected to - the actual work we (want to) do.

WetGeek

I'd be interested in knowing whether there's a way to make occasional additional contributions via Open Collective? If one is having an especially good month, and wants to send Solus a bit more one time, how would one do that?

tomscharbach

WetGeek I'd be interested in knowing whether there's a way to make occasional additional contributions via Open Collective? If one is having an especially good month, and wants to send Solus a bit more one time, how would one do that?

Make a one-time "custom contribution" whenever you feel like doing so. It will add to your total contributions and doesn't affect your monthly recurring donations, which are automatic deductions from your credit card.

WetGeek

tomscharbach Make a one-time "custom contribution" whenever you feel like doing so

Thanks, Tom. I was actually interested in how to contact Open Collective to do that. I haven't seen their web address since we first started using them.

WetGeek

WetGeek Thanks, Tom. I was actually interested in how to contact Open Collective to do that.

@tomscharbach, I was so intrigued by the image of your phone, I totally missed the link in your message, until I saw it expanded in the email the forum sent me. I now know what I need to do. Thanks again!

tomscharbach

xjdwc My view is that the current emphasis on monthly sustaining contributions is an effective way to go. I would like to see the Open Collective link more prominently displayed on the website (e.g. on the index, download and support pages) as many other distros do, and perhaps a short fundraising drive on the website once a year (perhaps tied to new ISO releases, when we get more traffic than normal) to encourage more members of the community to become monthly contributors would be a useful strategy.