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How to fund Tabs Outliner's development?
[I've created a new thread for this topic which began here: http://tabsoutliner.userecho.com/topic/132080-sync-tabs-tree/#comment-626646 ]
Hi Vladyslav,
I'm finally able to reply and can now spend some time thinking about how to generate money for your work on Tabs Outliner.
> There is also many similar tools in a same field
These tools only appear similar at first glance. Once you start using Tabs Outliner you realize that it is a very different tool.
> direct competitors, with near half a million users
> count, who will be more then happy to take the
> sources, and just publish them as updated version
> of their own tool.
The bottom line is that there needs to be a way to generate revenue regardless of whether Tabs Outliner stays proprietary or becomes Free Software.
Before contemplating other ways of generating revenue, let's start by investigating the potential of fundraising.
A fundraising campaign could, of course, fund software of either license type. Fundraising often has a goal. If the goal was to raise enough money to change the license to a Free Software license, and if you never made any more money off of Tabs Outliner after this fundraiser, how much money would need to be raised? Think of a number that would include allowing you to do Tabs Outliner development for one additional year (that way we could at least get some bugs cleaned-up).
And there's no correct answer to that question. There would likely be multiple reasons you might pick say $10,000 as the number, and multiple reasons you might pick $50,000 as the number. You might also decide that there is no maximum amount you would be willing to accept in return for changing the license.
The point is simply to start our investigation of possibilities by explicitly detailing as many of the knowns as possible.
BTW, in case it's not obvious, if the license was a Free Software license, when the day arrives that you are no longer able to spend time developing Tabs Outliner the user community would be able to find someone else to continue this work.
-- david
Hi Vladyslav,
I'm finally able to reply and can now spend some time thinking about how to generate money for your work on Tabs Outliner.
> There is also many similar tools in a same field
These tools only appear similar at first glance. Once you start using Tabs Outliner you realize that it is a very different tool.
> direct competitors, with near half a million users
> count, who will be more then happy to take the
> sources, and just publish them as updated version
> of their own tool.
The bottom line is that there needs to be a way to generate revenue regardless of whether Tabs Outliner stays proprietary or becomes Free Software.
Before contemplating other ways of generating revenue, let's start by investigating the potential of fundraising.
A fundraising campaign could, of course, fund software of either license type. Fundraising often has a goal. If the goal was to raise enough money to change the license to a Free Software license, and if you never made any more money off of Tabs Outliner after this fundraiser, how much money would need to be raised? Think of a number that would include allowing you to do Tabs Outliner development for one additional year (that way we could at least get some bugs cleaned-up).
And there's no correct answer to that question. There would likely be multiple reasons you might pick say $10,000 as the number, and multiple reasons you might pick $50,000 as the number. You might also decide that there is no maximum amount you would be willing to accept in return for changing the license.
The point is simply to start our investigation of possibilities by explicitly detailing as many of the knowns as possible.
BTW, in case it's not obvious, if the license was a Free Software license, when the day arrives that you are no longer able to spend time developing Tabs Outliner the user community would be able to find someone else to continue this work.
-- david
Customer support service by UserEcho
If not, I would be more than happy to just donate €30 to help support the continued development of Tabs Outliner, which is just an insanely useful extension. After I noticed that the PayPal donate button no longer works, I did a little research and it seems like Western Union would work to send money to the Ukraine.
I haven't used it before, but it seems relatively straight forward and the fees don't seem to be completely terrible either (about 10%). When sending money to the Ukraine, only cash can be chosen as the delivery method, so you, Vladyslav, would need to check if there is a location close to you where you could easily pick up the money. You can do that at the following address:
http://www.westernunion.co.uk/WUCOMWEB/staticMid.do?pagename=agentLocator&method=load
I am absolutely open to other suggestions if you think a different service would work better. If you think it would be too much of a hassle for €30, I'd understand, too. I do think, though, that if you had a working way to donate to you that is not just hidden somewhere but instead a little advertised in the extension, you could easily get more than the $300 (IIRC) that you have received when the PayPal button was still working.
I suppose the paid edition was created... sadly it relies on Chrome proprietary licensing system, which no other Chromium based browser will ever support. This blocks TO in Chrome. I'd move to Vivaldi or other browser, if it wasn't for TO.
Now we have another issue to solve :/