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On 9/20/2012 5:46 AM, Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:505B103B.2020700@mozilla.com" type="cite">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/4/12 7:09 AM, Paul Morris wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:50458D16.5000603@paulwmorris.com"
type="cite">I like this idea. It seems to me that the community
should have the means to fund itself. <br>
<br>
A number of TB users have expressed interest in making donations
to support continued innovation on TB (in blog post comments,
etc.). Having an official channel or system to make that
possible makes sense to me. <br>
<br>
</blockquote>
What are you guys thinking about funding ?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I believe that I have made my position perfectly clear in the past,
but I will repeat it.<br>
<br>
Sources of significant funding will be absolutely critical to having
Thunderbird continue to meet the needs of its users, and fulfill its
important mission in the internet space. But we are not talking
about a few hundred dollars here and there, we are talking about at
least a million dollars per year, and ideally 10 times that amount.<br>
<br>
People often misinterpret me to think that I am primarily interested
in earning a living for myself. Yes I believe that people who are
contributing significantly to something of value deserve to receive
back some fraction of that value - but that includes not only
myself, but also the other people who work on this project. I also
believe that money is an important means of communication of what is
important, and it bothers me when that communication is telling me
to go and work on my own narrow little project (where I might earn
some income) instead of on more important core bugs (like the folder
compact issues that I have been spent the most of the last week on,
but where I have no hope of earning any income).<br>
<br>
There is also a big, unfulfilled mission out there to create a
MozAwesome full-featured communication and information system,
encompassing multiple streams of information (email, contacts,
calendar, video, social feeds), multiple platforms (desktop, mobile,
web, and soon-to-be WebApp), and multiple user classes (basic,
power, and enterprise). The Thunderbird community is one of only a
few players that has any hope of rising to this challenge. This is
not going to be met by unpaid volunteers working a few hours per
week, students projects, and the occasional devoted geek with a day
job.<br>
<br>
Back to the original topic though, one of the possible funding
sources is donations. But to be effective, this needs to be promoted
in the product itself. I can imagine an annual donations campaign
that is integrated into the product in the form of a tab, or perhaps
an extra menubar. If we have, say, 10 million reachable users, 1%
giving $10 each would give a million dollars. The main obstacle to
this though is Mozilla culture itself, which has grown up with the
lucrative browser income stream where gobs of money are raised
invisibly. Thunderbird does not have that income stream, and should
not be constrained by that culture. Don't think, Firefox, that your
values concerning monetization are somehow absolute, and not
affected by your own lucrative income stream! Do not impose those
values on us if we don't have your same income stream!<br>
<br>
Yet at the moment I believe that the biggest obstacle is governance.
We simply don't have the structures in place that would allow us to
push forward with things like this - and I get pushback whenever I
try to recommend something. Gerv raised the issue of donations as
well a few months ago, and at the time I said we need to wait until
after the summit, when hopefully issues of governance would be
better defined. But that did not occur, at least to my satisfaction.
We have structures in place that view Thunderbird as a "desktop
email client" that is entering an honorable retirement, but not
structures that have any hope of moving forward.<br>
<br>
:rkent<br>
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