[asterisk-biz] General development funding: discussion and survey

[Steve Totaro]

I generally pay for custom development.  I would chip in a bit if there were
a PayPal Donation link on the Asterisk.org site.

John Todd "Summary:
>   Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements,
> bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively
> contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin

A profit margin for Asterisk or Digium?  Where is the line drawn here.  The
line was moved quite a bit with Adwords debacle.

I was not aware that Digium was a non-profit organization.

I have certainly profited from Asterisk but I also see some paradoxes to the
"OpenSource" flag that Digium waives.

The dual licensing, or whatever it is now is one paradox.  Another are the
numerous submissions on bugtracker that sit, stagnate.  Some bug fixes, some
new features, the authors asking, "can someone please update this?"
repeatedly, or just closed.

Another paradox is the commercial version of Asterisk and it's appliances.
I cannot say for sure but I think Fonality is doing well.  I don't have any
figures but it was featured on full page of the last Dell catalog that I
received in the mail, this may just be VC but I do get alot of requests and
questions about the Fonality lineup.  If that is the case, then maybe Digium
needs to step up it's partnering and marketing game.  3Com is great sales
channel but I don't get catalogs from them, just a monthly email that
briefly mentions the Asterisk appliance.

FreeSwitch on the other hand seems to be a true OpenSource project.  I even
approached an unnamed person that used to be very active with the dev of
Asterisk about adding functionality for profit, and was shot down, I
followed up with the potential of the enhancement and the profits it would
reap and no reply.

While disappointing to my entrepreneurial side, It really told me alot about
FreeSwitch and the ideals.

I am not sure what conclusions or thoughts I can draw from the original
post, but I think the follow-ups should be quite interesting.

-- 
Thanks,
Steve Totaro
+18887771888 (Toll Free)
+12409381212 (Cell)
+12024369784 (Skype)

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Paul Brown <prbrown at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't want to sound snarky, but could you offer a pointer or two to
> get somebody started who wanted to find the problems (and perhaps some
> suggested solutions) with the way Digium is doing Open Source?  I am
> genuinely interested.
>
> Currently, I'm inclined to agree that some sort of escrow-ed
> bountty-for-features type system would be beneficial.  As a guy with a
> telephony background but no programming, it might be useful for me to
> be able to contribute cash toward solving a problem or creating a
> feature that would be profitable to me.  As it is, I see that I would
> have 3 options...
>
> 1. Wait and hope.
> 2. Fund it completely - hire somebody myself.  Not necessarily
> unreasonable, depending on work:benefit of the particular feature/fix.
> 3. Find some other people that will share the cost with me.  Again,
> not unreasonable but I think the OP's suggestion would make this a lot
> easier.  If it was widely adopted.  But that was the question, wasn't
> it?
>
> Paul Brown
> Birmingham, AL
>
>
> > I would respectfully suggest that you look further into the reasons for
> > the failure of Digium's implementation of the Open Source Model before
> > you canvas the community with requests for funding.
> >
> > Regards
> > Craig Lawrence
> >
> > Summary:
> >   Would you help fund different Open-Source Asterisk enhancements,
> > bugfixes, or documentation if there was a way to collectively
> > contribute money towards the effort without a profit margin
>
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