Re: Video recording of LilyPond talk at Chemnitz

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi Jonas,

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Jonas Olson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Some messages seem to drop out and never reach me, but I understand the
> following was written by David Kastrup:
>> > You propose a system with a guarantee that I will not get any payment at
>> > all unless a minimum is met, meaning that I have to finance the whole
>> > month on my own.  This is not exactly going to extend the time I will be
>> > able to work on LilyPond while tapping into my own non-replenishable
>> > reserves.  I don't see that it would make sense for me to offer a plan
>> > where people pay less in case more is needed.
>
> Yes, what I described would be an all-or-nothing plan. I'm thinking that
> people might be unwilling to dump money on something that might turn out
> not to reach any reasonable target anyway.

But in this situation the donations reach reasonable target - just
look at David's "Investors' Reports".

> Say, for example, that you are working a different job but would like to
> return to developing LilyPond full time. You could collect funds with a
> target that would support you for some predetermined time on the
> condition that all donations will be returned if the target is not
> reached (and you will then not leave your job for LilyPond).
>
> I don't _know_ if people reason like this, but I speculate they might,
> so I thought I'd put it out there for you to consider.

Ah, so it's not your opinion - this is what you think *others* may be thinking?
If they /do/ think like that, it would be very unfortunate, because
the situation is definitely not like the one you described above.

> A different idea: Could you partner with a publishing house that might
> see something in LilyPond that would be beneficial for them. They get
> all the support they want and they get the bugfixes and features they
> need the most. In return, they pay you for doing that as well as working
> on LilyPond in general.

That's a good idea, but from what i know no publishing company (at
least one big enough to pay David significant amount of money) wants
to hear about LilyPond - they're all "Finale, Sibelius or go away; we
don't care about the quality you provide".
There's only one way to change this: publish more good and significant
music editions with independent publishers (that's what Urs Liska's
doing right now).
But it won't make much sense for David to run his own publishing company.

best,
Janek