Funding plugin dev

It might be a good idea to start a fund/get donations to develop some of these plugin ideas. I, for one, would be willing to fund some plugins but I need a repository of ideas that I can look through.

I'd like to see:

  1. plugin desc: what does the new plugin aim to do? The plugin dev or nominator should create this and pitch it to the community.
  2. popularity: how many people want this plugin? A voting or rating system would do the trick.
  3. cost: how much funding is needed? Maybe a progress bar could even show how far we've come along in terms of getting 100% of the amount.
  4. time estimate: how long would the plugin dev take?

Considerations:

  1. Would people send funds to a PayPal account or just pledge the money without paying anything until the 100% mark is reached? If the former, how can this be refunded? Would an expiration date help solve this? For example X amount must be raised by X time. If not, all paid money will be refunded.
  2. Can the developer take donations or charge for the plugin?
  3. Are there minimum or maximum donations?
  4. Could we host this elsewhere? We all know the pains of having to search for plugins here on Elgg or having discussions about them (eg, notifications on topics, not groups)... might another solution be better?

I'd like to see more growth here on Elgg but it's obvious that there aren't enough good devs out there. We support them already by giving them feedback, suggestions, even thanks but sometimes they just don't have the time to give back to the community because they have paid work to do. Might paying them help?

I see a number of existing plugins that are good but could be even better, however, I'm quite sure that the dev can't add features or integrate the plugin better because of lack of time.

Your thoughts?

  • Well said, Anna. In my experience it is not so much the funding, but more the focus: Dev's create plugin for their client, deliver, get paid...and goes to some other task. Although client may be happy, for generic functions, the plugin is not ready.

    Suggestion I am fond of is to act like is done with TidyPics: 3-4 'heroes'  around some main plugin function/purpose. They together commit to improve over time. It is in fact Curverider that could designate the main plugin topic and an initial hero with start piece of code to go further. Take Groups, take Files, take Calendar/Datepicker / etc....

  • @All::

    I like Anna's phrasing.

    We tried earlier this year -- success rate = 0.1 %. Most people quite very openly said they would not even send $1 ;-)

    But perhaps.. seeing comments from Anna, Mark, several others.. perhaps the elggworld is modernizing.. changing...

  • abandoned

    @Dhrup: Why didn't it work? Were devs disinterested? Were users unaware? If you could give me feedback about past failures, maybe we can find a way to fix the problem that prevented the original idea from taking off.

    @Tom: Perhaps teamwork is the way to go. That might be another criteria... number of team members needed.

    The idea of a forum was floated some time ago and another member even offered some webspace. So today I quit my bitching and just decided to get off my ass and do it.

    At the moment, I am setting up a phpBB forum to help discussions move along. It will be elggtalk.com.

    The domain was bought and the forum was setup by myself in an hour, so the theme isn't anything special. But hey, at least it's blue!

  • @Anna,
    I will try and find those posts from the past 8 months
    so that you can see what has passed before
    how little support was offered/ proferred
    how lack of support was slammed (e.g. "It's GPL.. *all code should be *free..." ad nauseum..)
    we went through a very sad phase of non-solidarity ;-(

    ps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg  LOLZ ;-)

  • I've tried several times to get a group of organisations or individuals to fund a plugin.

    The pattern is always the same. Initial enthusiasm, and then only a few euros/dollars appearing when the hat actually gets passed around. As Dhrup says, there are also the usual "software should not cost money" nuts, but those I can ignore. The problem is more the clients.

    In my experience, clients have very specific needs and do not want to share a developer's time.

    I think most good free Elgg plugins are written by developers who take the (unpaid) time to take something they've written for one client and try to make it more generic. Sometimes that pays off as a generic plugin can be a starting point for a second or third client project.

    My event calendar plugin has code funded by about 5 different clients.

    But all of these had their own requirements. There was no overt cooperation.

  • It's in common good idea and may be vital. From my side I can suggest (and offer all needed action) to use modified for such special requirements MantisBT (it's mainly bugtracker, but can be easy adopted to the model of payed features tracker). I also consider idea of shared funding for plugins (or any other code, wanted more than 1 person) fair and transparent. Code can cost a lot of money, which one man just can't spent, but 10 (f.e) - can, without headache

    Note - I only strongly disagree with Paypal route, this way devs can lost rather big part of customers

    First bid - (£|$|€)10 for fixed friendpicker, which will show 8-bit letter in alphabet

  • Lovegin John

    @Dhrup, @Anna and all,

    I am very much interested with the conversation taking place here.  I had this thoughtvfew months back and I launched a site to support it. But hardly anyone used it, its at http://scriptshares.com. So, if anyone wants a platform that can be used to accomplish your needs, we have already one.

    As a developer, I always welcome these types of ideas and concepts and encourage the world to become part of it. As elgg becomes more popular and stable, I expect to have more people on this now.

    Good uck....

    Lovegin John.

  • Lovegin John

    @Dhrup, @Anna and all,

    I am very much interested with the conversation taking place here.  I had this thoughtvfew months back and I launched a site to support it. But hardly anyone used it, its at http://scriptshares.com. So, if anyone wants a platform that can be used to accomplish your needs, we have already one.

    As a developer, I always welcome these types of ideas and concepts and encourage the world to become part of it. As elgg becomes more popular and stable, I expect to have more people on this now.

    Good uck....

    Lovegin John.

  • I think Vazco's model has been the best. Build a plugin at two different levels. One commercial and one free.  Both open source.  The free one get's posted here, but is very scaled down.  The commercial one is feature-rich and he supports the daylights out of it.  I don't really think this idea of chipping in, donations style method works, as Kevin pointed out.  And I have seen - first hand - him try to get donations for development and it went no where, though there was initial enthusiasm.  For instance, he tried to get a fund going for themes to be developed, back in the 0.7/0.8/0.9 days.  Didn't work.  So, for instance, Alexander brings up a valid issue, which is the friend-picker.  It's a real issue on cyrillic sites; I know.  What it most likely will require is someone like Vazco or Webgalli writing a plugin that will override that and fix it.  A "free" version may be offered here.  A more feature-rich version may be offered over on Elggdev.  Food for thought.

  • abandoned

    Back in those days, I don't imagine that there were that many people interested in Elgg. I think Elgg is gaining ground so there are probably more people willing to donate. At any rate, we will give it a go regardless of the past failure(s).

    I'd rather not get into discussion about what is the "best" model. Vazco's great. I'm a fan and customer. However, there is room for other models.

    As I have posted previously, I am in the process of setting up a forum. I'd like your feedback in particular about the Plugin Development forum: http://elggtalk.com/viewforum.php?f=32

    In it, you will find subforums for Plugin Requests, Plugin Development and Plugin Mashups. I have posted some guidelines/rules as an announcement in each. Your collective feedback here would be much appreciated.

    Please note that I am still in the process of setting up (looking for and installing various mods) so be nice.