Donations

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 12:36 am

If the old adage "You get what you pay for.." is true....we're in sad shape.

I PM'd this to Raven, then thought I would post it also:

Hi Raven,

I was really shocked when I saw that there were no donations yet this month, especially considering how late in the month it is. I know times are hard right now, but come on - it's not even 10:30am and you've already had ten times the hits my busiest site gets in a whole day but I guess the temptation to get something for nothing has been too much. Maybe I am weird, but I don't think a few bucks a month is too much to show our support for what you do here. I sure hope you get a lot of people to donate when they download RN, because apparently they don't appreciate the support you give on this website. Right now there are 43 users online. I would think that out of the hundreds of people that visit this site each day there would be at least a small percent willing and able to help support it. If I could support it all by myself I would because it is going to be a sad day and many after if/when this site goes away for lack of money.

Doulos

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 9:16 pm

Although I haven't had much success yet with it, another thing to add might be Flattr.com to the site. If you already have a few really good projects that you donate too regularly, if they are also on Flattr (such as NoScript), why not instead spread out that "love" a bit more and sign up to automatically Flattr every month. However, if you cannot afford to even Flattr others, you can't "play" as its a "give and you will receive" kind of thing.

I too am shocked. Why not something low, like $10 / yr or make it a cool even $1 or $2 / month. Its been talked about so much here but I think the concern is also scaring people away. Don't know what else to say. I wish things could be different. I just checked, the last donation I received was March 20, 2010 for $4.50. How pathetic is that? If I didn't have a few paid text links, I would have the big goose-egg! Even that doesn't even bring in a 1/3 of what I need to pay my share of the server.

registered · Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:42 am

I don't think its the lack of money but more the current status of the web.
People move to new systems with more an "application" feel then an "os" feel, on how things work.

Look at the admin menu of *nuke systems, they look as if you're viewing the Windows OS control panel, and that is also way outdated.
People now tend to have real and easy content management on the front of things and embed stuff like twitter and facebook (although they suck, trust me on this).
This means they move to use other resources and this is noticeable in the forum, as there are less frequent posts then in the past (also Dragonfly has this issue).

It doesn't matter if your system is secure and fast, "app" is the buzz word these days.

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 12:30 pm

It's just a philosophy issue. I have a local radio station here called Pacifica, who do excellent work, they are supported 100% by membership. They just might not make it in 2011 and might need to turn off the lights. They are begging for donations, but not enough ever come. Then you have a prick like Rush on the radio making millions. His philosophy is a business model, that will support itself. RN and open source of course the way to go, but I see a lot of business models offering components, extensions, themes, making a tone of kaching!

$ on other open source cms. What i notice on nuke base community is as if making $ is selling out... but I say there's nothing wrong with making honest money. You know I probably would have paid for some of the downloads that i have gotten from free Shocked

yes at times i donate, but you know, when someone wants something...the motivation is there.

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 3:57 pm

Let me offer an analogy. As some of you know I run a website (based on RN, of course) for a bicycle club in Albany NY. We run 100's of rides a year for members and guests. As of last April (2010) we had about 650 club members (with 1500+ registered users of the web site). Difference: club membership cost $17 per year, web registration was free. Then we discovered that our ride insurance only covered guests for one ride. We knew we had a lot of guests doing club rides for "free" but not how many. When we changed the policy so that guests could only ride once for free, all of a sudden our PAID membership jumped to 800+ ... almost a 25% increase.

Now as to donations and Raven's site. We all know that recently Raven has been getting hammered with spam from people who have registered (one way or another) as users. One way to eliminate this is to require paid membership in the site in order to have a username. No payment, no membership ... period. Something on the order of $10 per year would probably cover administrative costs and leave something left over. I'd guess. There are in excess of 17,000 registered users here. Give them 3 months to make their donation and then delete everyone who hasn't.

The benefits of the site are apparent. Anonymous could still come read the Forums, search etc. (although I've seen sites where search is only available to registered users). But until you pay and register no posting. I bet that would get rid of spammers once and for all.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

I think the time may have come. I've always fought the paid membership but being realistic, there are not many alternatives.

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 8:52 pm

paid support
in the forums have [solution][/solution] tag and people who paid may see the solution?

A bicycle club is not the same, but the costs are still there

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 9:30 pm

Definitely a possible - Thanks!

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 9:40 am

for me personally I would like the support to remain free but possibly a per-domain licensing on the software. I think code-authors has a valid argument that *nuke is not licensed under the GNU GPL anyway.. Not sure what would be involved in implementing this.. food for thought though..

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:29 am

I think that trying to manage a "pay per solution" arrangement would be VERY tricky. Often times the "solutions" that are posted are really an amalgam of several people's inputs ... how do we determine when there is truly a "solution" and who needs to pay? A lot of our Forum threads are really discussions rather than (a) state a problem and (b) get a solution. It just doesn't work that cleanly.

We have to be practical in terms of what is manageable. Just pay $10 a year to have a username here. Start by cleaning out what are probably many thousands of usernames who haven't visited the site in years. Just delete them. Notify the remainder that they have say 3 months to make their first year's donation. Meanwhile start requiring all new users to pay before they get a username. This would take care of spam in a hurry.

Incidentally, if Raven doesn't have time to review the payments and pending usernames himself, he could pay someone (a trusted person of course) say $2 for each pending username reviewed.

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:33 pm

Paid support wont work.
I support aswell on here,and i'm not a official RN dev.

So what happens if i support people that didnt payed?
Once you go ASK for money or give it a forced navigation to pay for this or pay for that methode.You go loose members , atleast me.
Just leave it as it is, but put aspect to template and commercial modules.

Do it like Apple store and/or Androïd market.

Sometimes i think RN is based on an illusion,promote to have a good secured nuke fork..
(you can say what you want,for me it isnt more as what i expect nuke would be if FB putted efford in it,either alone,what i think is an illusion aswell, or gived room to co-dev's.).
But misses the intelligents to give it a boost for popularity and current web standards.

I also sometimes get the idea that the dev's are some old rusted farts who refuse to go with the flow.
Like... we are content with it , so why our users wouldnt.And the 2 or 20 who complains are nothing to our 17.000 registerd users.

On the other hand , i maby reflect my own incompetence to you.
I once was there where you are.

Grtzzz wHiTeHaT

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:37 pm

paid support for forums?
no forums are forums. it can be a bonus to membership, added access. but support can only be given via a system which one can submit ticket and track them as well. so it will require some dedicated team of course to handle them.
I have a joomla membership that is 79 usd per year and that's what they do. they have some developer members in their forums who sometimes respond to threads, but usually it's just members, but then they have a system for submitting tickets. they ask of course for members to post their questions first, after searching for answer. there are a hell of a lot of talented people here, its just a matter of organizing yourselves to provide a kick butt membership program.
just my 2 cents Very Happy

jc

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:09 pm

I know I'm new to RN and all... but I don't mind spouting off when I deem worthy.... so here I am.

I love RN and don't have any intentions of moving to any other CMS so long as I can avoid it, however, I agree that without some sort of revenue generation... RN is doomed.

Tying into the "core components" conversation held in another thread... it's my opinion that RN needs to define the core of itself prior to charging for anything.

Strictly speaking of my own opinion here...RN (core) should be "free to download" and be modular.

From some "market" (maybe built into core showing in the admin page) type system... modules themselves could be paid/free depending on the developer etc. The developer would pay a % on sales back to RN. (there would be a need for oversight from advanced developers on this)

The logic behind this is that (A) RN (core) would still be "free"... (B) Sales of modules would dictate the popularity of the CMS and also support the core itself & (C) sales of the modules would help cover the time spent by the developer on the module.

Just my .02 on that matter and I'm sure there are tons of things that I missed in there... but it's just an initial thought on the subject.

------------------------------

Also, I agree with N.W. that there really REALLY needs to be a organized system for support. That alone will alleviate a lot of headache with repeated questions over and over again in the forums (ha...fat chance huh?) as well as better documentation and organization plus a more focused approach to furthering the development of RN.

1. Sr. Developers
2. Jr. Developers
3. Support
4. Apprentices

Sorry if I'm overstepping my bounds as a newbie or missing conversations relating to these subjects prior to this... but I really want to see RN survive and thrive.

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:04 pm

@killing-hours worship

You said it how i wanted to say it.

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:50 pm

The life of RN is not the real issue in this thread. The cost of maintaining this support site is. This needs to be a revenue generating site.

Site Admin Joined: Aug 22, 2007 Posts: 1772

paid support?

ok! if it is present a exclusive dev team every day for any questions - i pay it!

but i would also miss this freedom which offers this project...! the open source of the RN make many extensions possible. if you close this, then the subscribed users want more support for her money. can you offer this? it is a decision for the community...
RavensScripts

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6432

Apologies for being quiet lately... Here are some thoughts:

paid support works (depending on whom you speak with) for products used by companies who require it (and typically for products have commercial alternatives - Red Hat, MySQL, JBoss, SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, Pentaho, etc.) - and, paraphrasing the founder of another commercial open source vendor, ActiveGrid, commodities tend to do better because people can't justify paying more for pure commercial software. Maybe that's why Oracle chose to knock off Red Hat Linux instead of trying to create its own OS. Though there are significant selling costs (even for open source), taking the licensing cost discussion out of the equation can help open source in corporate procurement cycles (but I digress).
SaaS models are another way open source "vendors" are trying to succeed. The software is free, but we'll host / support it for you. This is a slight variation on paid support, but an important one. Even commercial software companies are using this approach.
low-cost apps is a model that works on a hot technology (mobile platforms). To djmaze's earlier point, there is a lot of focus on this. But it highlights an important, often overlooked point: the underlying technology eventually becomes commoditized because the apps are what really matter. Certain open source apps (namely, Magento) are leveraging the app store approach - though it's not likely they will make money on it (they also make money on support). However, in a severely crowded open source CMS market, enabling developers to profit from a core feature set with a built-in, easy-to-install commercial app market could significantly improve the app / theme set, and thus increase the reach of the core. This could create advertising and commercial support opportunities...
finally, advertising is another potential revenue stream for a support site like this. But critical mass is necessary for this to be viable (see previous comments on apps).

What does this mean for RN, and specifically for RavenPHPScripts.com? In the context of RN, stimulate app / theme development by helping them make money. For RavenPHPScripts, commercial support for RN isn't a likely alternative as the current community-based organizations couldn't / hasn't provided sufficient income. What would happen if we only support paid members? The expected level of support for those would likely exceed our ability to effectively support them (yes, it's all about expectations), but we would also lose a portion of our user base to competing projects (who aren't as far along in the development cycle and haven't reached this point yet). That said, there are other opportunities: affiliate commissions for commercial products used by PHP developers (there is a fair amount of pure PHP support here, too), as well as other discounts and potential benefits for paid members.

Just some thoughts...