Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[David Kastrup]

Tim McNamara <address@hidden> writes:

> On May 28, 2012, at 1:46 PM, Hannes Kuhnert wrote:
>> Tim McNamara schrieb:
>>> Sending money directly to developers instead of to a central Lilypond
>>> account cuts a lot of costs and eliminates much of the need for
>>> organizational bureaucracy (e.g., an accounting department).
>> 
>> On the other hand donations to a non-profit organisation would give the 
>> contributor a benefit on income tax (think as higher donations at same 
>> effort).
>
> That's not a bad point an there is some truth to that, but I don't
> feel the need to get a tax break in order to feel that my donation to
> Lilypond has value to me.

The advantage would likely be more that it would become easier to get
institutional donations.  There are several institutions that have money
to burn at the end of the financial year, and being able to burn it on a
cultural tax-deductable cause makes things a lot easier.

I consider it difficult to get support from _direct_ candidates, namely
music publishers.  They are either small and don't have money to spare,
or they are large and have no interest at all in investing in possibly
disruptive technology that loses them their competitive advantage gained
with established workflows and data.  So the "sponsor things that are of
public interest and tax deductable" is likely the better angle for
getting sponsors that are actually rather marginally interested in the
actual product.

> I think the most sustainable approach is to get a lot of conscientious
> Lilypond users to commit to donating a fairly small amount.  There are
> thousands of us, after all.  500 of us donating €10 a month ought to
> make this work.

Well, "this" so far was keeping me going.  €5000 a month would be way
more, and it would not make sense giving all that to me.  For one, I
can't actually provide equivalent value in return, being only one person
and modestly effective in spite of high skills.  For another, taxes and
social security would eat a sizable part of that since they are
income-based.  So with that kind of sum, one would indeed have to form a
non-profit or similar that serves as a project coordinator.  But even
while I have been caught flatfooted by the current response in one-time
donations after mentioning that I'd be short this month, I don't
consider the "danger" of getting this kind of amount all that imminent.

> If someone set up a non-profit to collect and distribute contributions
> to Lilypond, a goodly percentage of those contributions would
> necessarily go to run the non-profit: legal fees, registration fees,
> accounting costs, etc.

That's the rub.  Something like "Dante", the German TeX user group, has
a budget that's in the order of €100000 yearly, and they finance
servers, user group meetings, an office with secretary, four membership
magazine issues per year, quite a bit of administration, costs and fare
(when requested) for volunteers helping on conferences, several
projects.  This goes actually a long way, but they have in their history
only financed a full-time developer for one or two years (at Czech
rather than German salary rate IIRC), and it was pretty bad in return of
investment.  I think they have something like 2500 members.

I think it would not be easy to get so many people for LilyPond
together.

> Paying developers directly sidesteps that stuff.  There is the
> perception of that being a less accountable approach and I think that
> some may be uncomfortable with that- it took me a little thinking to
> get over it.

Well, it does not get any more accountable than a public repository and
issue database.  I make reports telling those who contribute financially
how the turnout was: in theory, I could make up numbers.  So if that is
your worry, donate an odd sum: if I write "3 times €25", you have to
believe that I counted your donation of €25 among them.  If you donate
€37.13 in contrast, you'll be able to verify that you are in the list.

-- 
David Kastrup