From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2009-12-18T08:28:52+09:00
Subject: Re: How to fund an open-source project?

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Eleanor McHugh
<eleanor@games-with-brains.com> wrote:

> It's potentially a big project and I'd like to be able to work on it full-time so as to make reasonable progress in the coming year but I'm completely clueless about how to raise sponsorship or even whether that's practical. Does anyone with greater experience of driving an OSS project have any advice they're willing to share on this or any related topics?

When it comes to grassroots efforts, I guess my "Ruby Mendicant"
project stands out:
http://majesticseacreature.com/mendicant/

But I think that the environment is different these days, and I
struggled to get funding for the Unity project, even though I thought
this was a cool project as well:

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/4640

I did end up doing at least as much work as that $270 paid for, but
the project got sidelined due to having to pay the bills with other
persuits...

So I guess what I'm suggesting is that it might not be worth it to try
too hard to do this grassroots with the way things are lately.   Even
with my success story of Ruby Mendicant, I was living at a subsistence
level off of the donations and needed to take on occasional
contracting work to supplement.

Better to go try to get yourself hired by Engineyard or something... :-/
Or save up some money and take a few months off.

At any rate, I'm happy to discuss this further if you're still
interested in the idea of getting community sponsorship.    But
realistically, it'd be best to find a company willing to pay for your
work, as much as I hate to say that.

-greg