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Procedural aspects of bounties

Questions about the FlightGear organisation, website, wiki etc.

Procedural aspects of bounties

Postby Hooray » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:35 pm

Regarding the $25 US, you could obviously use a system like www.kickstarter.com to collect funds (crowd-funding).
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Re: Bounty: Flightgear Scenery Designer

Postby sgofferj » Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:36 pm

Hooray wrote in Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:35 pm:Regarding the $25 US, you could obviously use a system like http://www.kickstarter.com to collect funds (crowd-funding).

Yeah, I could but maybe this is one of the reasons, why earlier attempts weren't successful. I, for myself, don't want to sign up with yet another platform in the internet and deal with yet another new system which I have to learn and understand. Nowadays, many if not most net people have a PayPal-account. That should suffice together with a list of contributors in the respective Wiki-article.
Keep it simple and stupid... ;)
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Re: Bounty: Flightgear Scenery Designer

Postby Hooray » Fri Jan 06, 2012 7:59 pm

sgofferj wrote in Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:36 pm:
Hooray wrote in Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:35 pm:Regarding the $25 US, you could obviously use a system like http://www.kickstarter.com to collect funds (crowd-funding).

Yeah, I could but maybe this is one of the reasons, why earlier attempts weren't successful.


I understand your point, and even share it somewhat. However, at least to my knowledge, nobody has ever tried using a crowd-funding service at all. To be honest, I think there's a certain potential here actually. I am specifically referring to the community of people already using such services to support certain projects and efforts. I have myself used such a service in the past, and it is a great way to reach out to people who wouldn't otherwise be aware of your project.

In addition, there are certain benefits, such as simplified administration and management of "pledges". Maybe I am way off about this, but if you are serious about giving this a try, I would seriously consider using an established crowd-funding platform and giving it a try.

There's simply a certain momentum that could be leveraged. Posting projects to crowd-funding platforms is all about using web 2.0 properties, i.e. social bookmarking, facebook, videos, graphics etc. That may sound silly, but this could actually "just work". We have plenty of art work that could be used here (videos, screen shots, banners and so on).

Let's just be realistic about it: with "our" infrastructure, and your offer to handle the details, how many "bounties" or supporters could we realistically handle? 3, 5, 10 ? And then again, how many supporters are we likely to find? 3-5 ? That's my best guess actually. A crowd-funding platform like kickstarter.com has a huge momentum and a growing community with plenty of folks who are exactly looking for these types of projects. If done right, you would probably be able to get 300-500 USD using crowd-funding easily.
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Bounty: Flightgear Scenery Designer

Postby sgofferj » Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:08 pm

Well, actually I only started it :). The idea of this bounty system is that every single bounty has it's own maintainer, which usually is the person who started the bounty. It should be pretty much self-administrating through the Wiki.

I do see your points. I have to think about that because my time IS limited and the time I had to invest familiarizing myself with that platform would be considerable. I'm also thinking that Flightgear is still a somewhat "closed" community, so the chance that an "outsider" would e.g. see the Comanche bounty and jump on it, deciding "now I start making aircraft for FG" is rather low.
Also, for developing addon code like FGSD, you need to be somewhat familiar with FG. For an "outside" developer, who had never got any contact with FG, the effort would be also considerable because the person would not only have to dive into code written by somebody else but also familiarize him-/herself with the whole FG basics.
So from the aspect of reaching developers which I wouldn't reach through the forum, the Wiki or the mailinglist, I have my doubts about the potential gain.
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Re: Bounty: Flightgear Scenery Designer

Postby Hooray » Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:19 pm

yes, the target audience is finite of course. On the other hand, there are other OSS examples leveraging crowdfunding successfully, even though they are "also niche software".

Obviously, "we" are too FG centric ATM, we would need to compare FG to proprietary products (namely MSFS/X-Plane) and highlight its strengths in comparison. The wiki has plenty of stuff that could be borrowed easily in a copy/paste fashion: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Unique_Features

Bottom line being, crowd-funding really is all about marketing, PR and presenting your project properly.

We are in the lucky position that we have plenty of artwork contributors here, some of whom have created remarkable graphics and even videos. So it would be possible to have another "competition" for folks to create videos specifically meant to be used for crowdfunding (i.e. advertising).
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
Hooray
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