Ardour Financing Brainstorming

Community Ideas for Ardour
#21

Fully acknowledged Paul but I feel it’s important for people to understand why we keep going around in circles with this discussion. The basic problem is the failure of the GPL to protect the entitlements that it purports to grant. For example:-

(1) The copyright owner may exploit other licensing arrangements in addition to the GPL (e.g. to generate an income). But…
(2) The copyright owner may not restrict any entitlements granted to the recipient of his GPL licensed work. However…
(3) The recipient is entirely free to hinder the copyright owner’s entitlement to exploit his rights in (1).

As long as the above disparity exists it will always be inherently difficult to make a living from GPL licensed software. To my mind, this is a needless weakness in the GPL but I appreciate that others may disagree.

#22

No worthwhile thing was ever easy. Of course, there are a lot dificult, pointless things to do with one’s life too, so that little aphorism doesn’t help a whole lot :slight_smile:

#23

OT@Paul:

If you ran for public office I think I would vote for you :slight_smile: . But PLEASE don’t do that as it might distract Ardour development!!

#24

upcoming law changes in Russia will give you a lot of new users and contributors. Many small studios and private engeneers wil switch to opensource from cracked software…

#25

after being shocked by Pauls honest and modest talk about Ardour vs. other DAWs… heh … my respects on that Paul… i just want to add an idea and a thought…

the idea… would it be functional for Ardours Financing if the users compilate a series of songs “made in ardour” in a downloadable CD (referring to the 10-14 songs group format, not the fisical format) that would sell to (almost obviously… already users) public online directly donating that income to Ardour? (sorry my english is not to good, hope you get my idea about re-motivating users to donate more once a year)

the thought… i can’t agree more with Paul about taking care more the already existing base of users, actually i think a not very complex stadistic would show that theres a percentage of donations in $ related to users, something like… 20$ per user i dont know but… that give us the idea that a very good way to raise Ardours Financing is to simply (not simple… i know) increase the number of end users… that… i think would be a better point to listen to, that would not be against any actual Licensing, would not force anyone to pay, would not hurt anybody, it WOULD actually increase users based support and would increase support for ideas similar to the one i just added about a music compilation for sale to Ardours Donation…

now about increasing Ardours users base… its a lot more a task for us musicians, technicians and producers, and its not that hard, everytime a band records in my studio, i pretend to donate a small income per song for example, or for every band that records here i would give them a DVD with Ubuntu Studio and Ardour… making great music with ardour and “letting people know that we used an open source DAW” its Ardours best help i think…

#26

I like the idea of commercial users of Ardour sending contributions based on income raised by using it. Not so much an “contribution per song” perhaps, as a percentage of the actual income made.

I sort of promised myself I’d do this, as the approach makes more sense for me than a fixed monthly contribution, because running a studio is not my main job and income from it is very infrequent.

However , having recently recorded half a dozen demo tracks for a local band for which they paid me, I suppose that means it’s time I sent in another donation…!
[reaches for Paypal button…]

#27

Right now, I’m using Cubase for my commercial work, but it’s been a while since I upgraded and now I’m waiting for Ardour3 instead of getting the latest version of Cubase. I figured that if I signed up for a monthly subscription, I would help out just a little bit to make Ardour3 happen, and I really like the idea of a DAW where the users and the developers have such a close dialog about features, issues etc. That’s partly the reason why I prefer to put my money into Ardour development, rather than to Steinberg.
The other reason is that Linux is so much more easy to customize to fit ones needs, in order to get better performance out of the machine.

I also plan to give a percentage of my income for my commercial work, besides the monthly subscription, but that will have to be when I’m actually using Ardour for the job.

What we can do is to spread Ardour, mouth-to-mouth.
I’m sure most users here are surrounded by other people who share the same interest in music and recording technology, both for hobby and for serious jobs. There has to be lots of new users out there, that we can reach by networking.

If we share our knowledge and show people what they actually are able to do with this software, the userbase will grow without having to be ported to lots of different platforms.
And I think it is also our duty to encourage these new users to donate to the project.
Many people take the “free as in beer” part of open source, and Linux in particular, as granted, and they tend to forget that someone has to put a lot of time and effort to make the programs good.
If one user tells another user to support the project, in a friendly manner, I think the message will be clearer than if the developers must move into a more aggressive approach of making the users pay.

Also, I think commercials and payed propaganda is a bad idea, since it would move the developers focus from making a good program into brain storming on how to be seen and make more money.
Commercial campagnes do cost a lot as well, and a product that’s sold in a store tend to be over priced due to all the people who wants their share on the product’s way from the creator to the user.

As I see it, it is OUR job, as promoting users, to find ways to make more people use, and pay for Ardour, without the developers having to spend time thinking about those matters, since we want the developers to do what they do best.

Hands up, everybody in here who is making their living producing audio for the advertising industry.
We know how to sell things, don’t we?

#28

Educational gigs…

If I may, the fact that the only way to pay for Ardour is through PayPal is a major issue.

Ardour seems like a perfect choice for educational establishments working with all levels of students.
Particularly since it’s affordable and for more advanced students the source code is available.

I know for a fact that trying to set up a direct debit through paypal would be a no go for many colleges.

Finding a direct contact on the site to ask about this has also proved difficult.

#29

All I can say there is nicely put… someone here also said put it on your social networking pages… put it in your credits e.t.c… btw thanks Paul, drobilla and everyone for your continuuing efforts … Ardour truly is a great environment to work in…

I won’t say much else but people… please put your money where your mouth is… … if you downloaded via a package on your linux distribution (as most of us probably do)… then cough up a little bit… or better yet subscribe…

#30

Another idea: make it easier to subscribe. I just tried to and was not able because a credit card is needed. :frowning: I have a PayPal account and it is linked to my regular banking account but I do not own any credit card at all, which is still very common here in germany. But I would love to support the development of ardour, even as a paying mixbus customer.

#31

Update: I opted to donate which works w/o credit card. So I will return every month and do that instead of subscribing.