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Feedback for starting a crowd funding campaign


From: Urs Liska
Subject: Feedback for starting a crowd funding campaign
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 14:53:22 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.0

Hi all,

most of you will know that Janek and I have published a voluminous edition using LilyPond, LaTeX and Git (if not you may have a look at http://lilypondblog.org/category/fried-songs).This edition will soon receive significant public attention, and we intend to direct this attention not only to us but also to the used tools and concepts.

Private discussion with a number of the developers convinced us (actually it was mainly me who had to be convinced) that turning our project into a "LilyPond" project which will benefit both sides will only be possible if the edition is available as an open source project. The prerequisite to this is that all expenses needed for producing the volume have been covered, and to reach that goal we will soon start a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. For this I'd like to get some feedback here.

###
First topic is about a punching hook for the campaign. Of course we have our ideas about that, but as we're not really the "marketing" guys we could actually use any input here. We know the campaign is different from many in that it doesn't try to advertise something to be realized at all but making something free that already exists. So it's crucial for us not only to address a target group who would effectively want that concrete book but raise it to a more generic level and point out the general benefit for free software/culture from having this edition as an open source one. I see it in two areas: having it available as a "study object" and having it as a flagship project for lobbying LilyPond/LaTeX/Git in the publishing business and scholarly editing.

###
Our basic calculation will work as follows:
We'll calculate the missing amount of money per start of the campaign.
Any regular sales during the campaign will be taken into account (i.e. lowering the threshold).

If we don't reach the goal during the campaign we'll at least have approached it. All perks backers may buy will be valuable even when the edition isn't opened yet.

If we reach the goal we will update the source repository to a usable state and remove the references to the publisher. _And_ we'll significantly reduce the retail prices for the printed books.

If we overfund it (up to a certain amount) we'll distribute the money between the three collaborators because the fees we have charged so far for our work are actually ridiculous.

If that target should be overachieved we'll donate back a major part of the surplus to LilyPond development, by sharing parts with David Kastrup and by sponsoring bug fixes or feature requests.

(Details of all this have to be decided yet)

###
Currently I think about offering the following perks, more ideas (or comments to my suggestions) welcome:

  1€ - hug (no further action))
  5€ - appreciation
       Name will be kept in the source distribution
      (but nothing really visible)
      (will be included in any of the following perks)
 10€ - serious appreciation
       Same as above but additionally visual place on our website
      (as long as that might exist)
 15€ - PDF/source package
       snapshot of the current state of the source directory,
       including PDFs of the individual scores.
       As long as we haven't reached the goal this will be a private
       copy, without license to redistribute, and without any
       cleaning up.
 15€ - Custom transposition
       (to be delivered as PDF or nicely printed)
 35/50€ - Printed book plus ZIP
       It's actually like buying the book regularly,
       plus the ZIP package (and the "appreciation")
100€ - Big Appreciation
       Add a special thanks section in the edition.
       Name will be in the source distribution and will
       appear in any further printed release
150€ - Interview on Scores of Beauty
      (limited to 5)
???€ - Bug/Feature (limited to 3-5)
       Sponsor one bug fix or feature implementation
       (in LilyPond, LilyPond libraries or LaTeX)
       Top up the same amount to the project campaign
      (See below for suggestions)
 ??€ - Merchandise articles
       with picture (our logo?) and text, something like
       "I helped freeing Fried" ;-) or
       "I support Free Culture"
       Ideas: Coffee mug, mouse pad, puzzle

###
Bug/feature perks
These should be an explicit part of the campaign, so they have to be defined in advance. If you have an idea, or even can implementing something for money, please tell me.

Ideas:
- Implement a meaningful document statistic with Frescobaldi's library
  (I might be able to do that)
- make \shape and \shapeII aware of wrong number of siblings (again).
  -> point to problems when changed line breaking
     messes up manually shaped slurs
- make lilyglyphs available to plain latex
  (instead of only xe- and lua-)
  (Karl Hammar has volunteered)
- Add a certain number/range of commands to lilyglyphs
  (can give several options as a choice)
  (I can do that)
- Add new layout control modes to Frescobaldi
- Incorporate Frescobaldi's ly-module/tool in LilyPond's repository
  -> make a new command line tool available
  -> enable LilyPond code with syntax highlighting on lilypond.org

###
Features that might be sponsored later (if we should raise enough money). These don't have to be specified as explicitly as the perks, but I would like to give at least a few examples of what we have in mind with that. Further suggestions welcome, but I think they have to be focused on our interest of scholarly editing.

Ideas:
- annotation interface for inserting (scholarly) annotations
  in the input files. Interface for editing them in Frescobaldi.
- Support development of MusicXML export (which is already progressing)
- Implement output on PDF layers (to create switchable comments etc.)
- print (functional, step) analysis symbols
  (in a new context, similar to lyrics).
- Make Jan-Peter's edition engraver generally available/usable
- LaTeX package to typeset critical reports (possibly using output
  from LilyPond's to-be-developed annotation interface).
- enhance my musicexamples LaTeX package so Lua can manage LilyPond code
  directly in the .tex file (like lilypond-book but directly from
  within LaTeX, without the need of an intermediate file).
- accounting function in Frescobaldi.
  Based on the document statistics mentioned above.
  Additionally one will be able to group item classes and assign
  money values to those (e.g. 1Ct. for a note, 2 (plus note number)
  for a chord or 15 for a temporary polyphony construct).
  After some training and fine-tuning this should give you a reasonable
  price that isn't based on estimates or page count but on the
  actual amount of stuff you've entered.


I know this is quite long, and I know that I'd be the first one to profit from that project. But I'm seriously convinced that it would be in the interest of the LilyPond community if we make this successful.

Thanks for any feedback
Urs



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